Brendan Ryan (Dublin North, Labour)
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It is the partial capacity benefit scheme. Do the witnesses have any early thoughts on how it is working? It appears that many of the people who apply for it are people who might have had an exemption and a disability pension and the exemption has been removed. They apply for the partial capacity benefit in order to keep working. It also appears that many of them are applying initially just to see what categorisation they achieve, that is, whether it is mild, severe or profound. That indicates how much of their basic social welfare payment they can retain. Therefore, some people are just testing it and there is probably a great deal of work in the Department dealing with the applications but perhaps, in the end, the applicant walks away and decides not to avail of it because it does not make economic sense for them.