Dr. Fiona Dukelow:

I will be brief, as I do not have much to add.

Means testing, how to assess various elements and whether a self-employed income should be treated the same as PAYE income are matters that connect with the wider issue of constantly being assessed for various payments, schemes and so on. The National Economic and Social Council and other bodies have recommended a single, portable means test and a working group to develop that. Perhaps the working group should also examine ways of simplifying how self-employed income is not only assessed, but also taken from Revenue’s data. This issue connects with other ways in which real-time Revenue data is now considered. There is a debate about whether we should shift between an hours worked system and a days worked system in respect of people who are working part-time while also claiming welfare. That is another hassle and a deeply complex issue. It could be simplified if people were able to have their hours worked recorded by Revenue. There may be parallels with how self-employed income could be treated and data could be gathered.

There are questions around how often income disregards are measured. We do it week by week, but a great deal of self-employed income is not earned week to week or even month to month, especially in farming. How to smooth out income disregards over time could be examined.

The Deputy’s question on the expectation to work was a good one. It will probably become more salient if we start examining how to reform disability payments again. Perhaps there is much to be learned from the reaction to the Green Paper’s proposals. For example, people with disabilities want to participate in the decisions that affect their lives, how their capabilities are recognised and how we develop a system of social welfare that does not necessarily involve an expectation to work, but enables people to work according to their capabilities. Philosophically, this involves moving away from ideas of deservedness and undeservedness, expectations to work and so on to looking at people’s capabilities and, further along, how models of welfare can be co-designed or co-produced by the people affected by them.

The Deputy spoke about how very few people wanted to stay home and do nothing. That is confirmed by all of our research. As Dr. Griffin stated, no one wants to claim, no one wants to stay on welfare for a long time. People do not like it. They want to have independent lives. That might be through paid work or recognised unpaid work. There are many resources tied up in compliance, not just at the start of a claim, but right throughout. It is incredibly complex in a way that does not serve people’s well-being.

I will finish on the issue of individualisation. The Deputy mentioned taking steps towards individualisation rather than a big bang approach. Taking steps is how it would have to be done. However, it has been considered for a long time. It has been discussed in several reports, even in the past decade. People are talking about starting with one cohort – those who can get the qualified adult payment – and considering various options for individualising the payment. Were we to individualise it, there are different views about whether there would also be an expectation to work. There is not much research in this area, but the National Economic and Social Council has done a piece of research on low-work intensity households, where many qualified adults are to be found. Those households are nowhere near activation or an expectation to work. If that payment is to be individualised, it will require careful thought in terms of how those people would engage with public employment services and so on or how they might be enabled to participate in the social economy as opposed to the labour market.