Ms Michelle Murphy:

Excluding the pension costs, it would cost approximately €900 million to do the €25 per week increase. If we include the pension on top of that, it would be an extra €600 million or thereabouts. As a result, we are looking at a total cost of approximately €1.5 billion. The important thing to remember when we are looking at the welfare budget is that our population is growing older as well, so the pension costs are the ones that are going to be driving that. Therefore, we do have a proposal in there. The Parliamentary Budget Office's recent report on the Social Insurance Fund makes for worrying reading. We also have a proposal around bolstering that now and looking at employers' PRSI in order that when we get to the point where the old-age dependency rate will have changed and where there will be fewer people in employment than there will be of older age, we will not have a big hole in that fund as well. It is about planning for that now.