Ms Camille Loftus:

It is very difficult to get a sense from the Mangan report of what the scale of losses to households in receipt of FIS will be. I give the example of a couple with two children and earnings of approximately €300 per week, which is not uncommon for someone working close to full-time hours in the retail or service sectors. The losses that couple faces under the Mangan proposals exceed €100 per week. While one might not be any worse off than when one was unemployed, to say it is fine that somebody on that low a wage should lose €100 per week while someone earning €1,000 loses about one tenth of that is a highly regressive proposal.