Dr. Tom Boland:

Deputy Ó Cathasaigh, who is not here right now, pointed out that there is a great deal of diversity of opinion about welfare and that there is support for more penny-pinching and for bringing the question of deservingness more into it. If you take an incremental approach such as that described by Deputy Ó Cuív, in which you slowly increase the thresholds and you can demonstrate that the result is more work rather than less work, I suppose you can bring those people with you if it becomes clear that in a way the measure can pay for itself and is something you can increase up to. There may be a point at which one has to stop and say that we will disregard not all income, while doing so up to a considerable level.

Politically, in terms of bringing people with you, we have this extraordinarily elaborate system already. Tearing it down probably is not the right approach but repurposing it to pursue certain social ends, such as the promotion of work in rural areas or work at the margins of employability on the labour market, seems to me to make sense in terms of the reform of this.