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

Most cases I come across with so-called dependent adults are small farmers and fishermen. They are not inactive but they are getting a means-tested payment to supplement their farming because the farming in the west of Ireland is poor. There are lots of small farmers all over the country but they predominate in a line from Donegal to Kerry. In those cases, many of the spouses or partners want to engage, and are capable of engaging, in the workforce. Sometimes the kind of work that is available would be home care or occasional work in hotels at events, such as weddings and baptisms, where extra staff is needed in occasional places, particularly in areas where there is seasonal tourism, but it is not every day. At present, the regime is that the first €60, if one works three days a week or more, is disregarded and after that they assess the balance at 60%. If the very wealthy were being taxed at 60%, one could imagine the outrage. This is a total disincentive to work.

One of the issues we are competing with here is that if there is a social welfare budget of €500 million, to pick a figure out of the air, a decision has to be made on whether to give it in general rises or to reform the system. There is a tension there as well. Let us presume we have a pot of €50 million to reform the system and the rest goes in the general increase because things have to be politically practical too. If we raise the threshold from €60 to €100 or €150 the first year and said that in no case are we going to take more than 50%, and see what happens, does it create an incentive to work for a lot more partners or adult dependants? Does it make a better pool of labour available where it is in short supply at the moment? It is slowly but surely getting you to individualisation because it is reducing the means testing on the partner or the adult dependant. Can our guests see merit in an approach like that as opposed to the big bang of individualising this and seeing what happens?