Ms Michelle Murphy:

When we start benchmarking, we will find that depending on the payment some of them will already have met it. It depends on the level of the social welfare payment. I repeat the point made in our submission that in respect of the challenging situation in which we find ourselves in terms of cost of living increases and the utility credit that is being issued, if we introduce an indexation process and choose average wages, and, as Dr. McDonnell suggested, looking backwards might be more appropriate than looking forwards, we will discover that we will not find ourselves in these types of situations because wage growth is generally beyond inflation in the first place. It means that Government also has certainty. There is budgetary certainty. It means the budgetary space can be used to tackle and target different vulnerable groups, be they people on social on welfare payments or people in low-paid employment. The positives outweigh any negatives in terms of how we might design it or fiscal implications.