Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Feehily. That is a very helpful clarification.

In terms of people supplying information to qualify under the financial hardship conditions, I know Ms Feehily is slightly restricted in terms of what she can say at the moment. However, she made a point regarding the need for people to supply lots of information in order to meet the criteria. Is it not the case that an awful lot of the information people would need is already residing with other agencies of the State? Perhaps an example would be useful here. Let us say a person applies on the basis of a rapid decrease in income due to a situation beyond his or her control. What can happen then is that such a person becomes entitled to a social welfare payment or, if it happened in the preceding tax period, the Revenue Commissioners would have captured that data in a tax return or it would be evident, in the case of a PAYE worker, through a fall in income. Is there not a way for Revenue to gather this information instead of asking people to assemble it, particularly if the information is already held by the State? Can we not take that additional hardship off people by using the information that is already available to us?