Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

That is good and we would like to keep ahead of that. Maybe there are more targeted interventions we can make that will support people in working, especially if they have children of school age, where people often have a little more breathing space within their working day. It comes back to the idea of the working age payment, where you are not tied into being able to work only one, two or three days, or whatever it is. That is a wider policy question but it is something the Department is working on.

On overpayments, Mr. McKeon stated we are somewhere between 2.9% and 3.8%, which is a low percentage but, of course, because the Department's budget is so big, it translates into an enormous sum. Are we chasing a performance target? If we are performing at between 2.9% and 3.8%, are we saying that is grand and that is where we want to be or is there a percentage we are striving towards? Do we have a best-in-class example? Mr. McKeon pointed to the UK example as being slightly worse than where we are and described us as being more or less mid-table. I say this bearing in mind what he was talking about regarding the need to balance overpayments versus our desire to make sure the payments people require are made to people, and I fully accept the argument we should accept a certain level of overpayment to make sure we are humane and compassionate in our social protection system, but are we chasing a certain percentage and is there a best-in-class example to which Mr. McKeon could refer?