Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On the working family payment, people getting employment of any type is much more preferable as a system than jobseeker's allowance and all these combinations. I think the Minister knows that that interface of low-paid people is inhibiting people from working. Has analysis been done to work out what kind of costs would be associated with extending the income limits for the working family payment? Even though the Minister has raised the threshold every year, the reality is that rising wages mean we are not really getting more people onto the working family payment. People always say that so many people are taken out of the tax net when income tax bands are changed but they are not because wages are going up, so they all arrive back instantly. The same people wind up back paying income tax. It is similar here.