Dr. Karina Doorley:

Yes, the value to a family can be very different from the cost to the State, depending on things like age and the amount of healthcare they actually need. It depends on how we measure it. Whether it is based on cost or value can drastically change the profile so we tend to not put that in as standard. However, the Department of Health does have access to that model and can run its own analysis using that. We tend to put in in-kind benefits that we are confident we are measuring robustly and that make sense in terms of how we value them. Valuing in-kind benefits is complicated but once we are sure that we are doing a good job of valuing them, we do that. Last year we did a five-year profile of the effect of the last five budgets compared with a scenario in which everything had to have kept pace with wage inflation. The free schoolbooks and school meals actually stood out there. They were turning everything from very negative to slightly positive for the lowest income groups and then negative throughout. It is worth measuring and keeping track of that.