Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Deputy. The minimum essential standard of living is an assessment of the minimum income that is needed to live and partake in social and economic norms of everyday life. As he has acknowledged, and I thank him for that, we provide funding to the Vincentian MESL Research Centre to support the research work plan. They provide us with high-quality work in an important area of social policy. One of the benefits of the Vincentian MESL Research Centre is that it is independent and that it provides an independent analysis of the different levels of income that are needed for a wide range of household types, which include the different costs arising for households in rural and urban locations.

The MESL Research Centre is already producing two documents on an annual basis that are of direct relevance to the Deputy's amendment. The MESL annual update, which is normally published in June, updates the annual MESL costs. Second, the MESL budget impact briefing is published after the budget. It outlines the core social welfare support changes and the proportion of MESL need that is met as a result of those changes. The annual report provides analysis of the permanent adjustments to core rates and to secondary supports. It accounts for the impact of permanent policy measures that reduce potential living costs. That would include the provision of hot school meals at primary level. It does that for a variety of household types again. Second, a comprehensive breakdown of household income compared to the MESL expenditure for different household types can be found in that report. It can be found in the appendix tables of each annual update. The information the Deputy is seeking is already there within the reports. That is why I am not accepting the amendment. I encourage all Deputies to review both documents that contain the information in a very accessible format that is there already.

We also, as a Department, fund research by the ESRI in this space. Last year the ESRI published a technical paper on the minimum essential standards of living, poverty and deprivation in Ireland. That looked at questions of crossover between the minimum essential standard of living and different measurements of poverty, which I know the Deputy is also interested in. Much of what the Deputy is seeking is available. We do use it. We use the research in the context of budgetary negotiations. We do use it to stand up our cases and our discussions that we have with the Department of public expenditure and we used it in this budget.