Mr. John McGeady:

It would be the basic payment.

When we are talking about the core social welfare aspect, we mean the basic payment. The different supplementary payments that combine with that would need to be indexed in future. Certainly, for the core rates, as has been stated, this would come in at €296 million to bridge the gap. As Dr. McDonnell said, this is actually quite a small sum of money. The total cost of the changes to the USC in budget 2024 was €365 million, and we are talking about a figure lower than that. Again, this change to the USC was a permanent measure, not a one-off.

Looking at some of the temporary measures, the cost of an energy credit is about €400 million. Again, we think this is a very realistic starting point. We chose the 27.5% rate because it is based on the Government's national anti-poverty strategy from 2022. It referred to providing €150 weekly, which comes in at 30% of what was then the gross average industrial earnings level. The CSO no longer records this figure, but it is equivalent to 27.5% of average earnings, a statistic that is being recorded by the CSO. This is a starting point in respect of the rate and the number of core payments that would be covered.