Mr. Ciarán Lawler:

We discussed this issue a little bit earlier. At the moment the current focus is on State pensions and the smoothed earnings approach, as the Deputy mentioned. There is a commitment in the roadmap for social inclusion to examine a benchmarking and indexation approach for other payments such as working age payments. As we discussed earlier, this brings in an added layer of complexity. For example, people are in different circumstances. Lone parents may have different needs from those of people with disabilities, who also may have different needs from those of jobseekers. There are different rates of payment across the social welfare system for different contingencies. All of that would have to be taken into account. Where would the benchmark be set? Would it be a percentage of earnings or would it be something else? How would it be indexed? Would everybody be indexed in the same way? There is a commitment to look at it and we will start looking at it this year. It does bring in an added layer of complexity, but we will examine it.