Dr. Se?n Healy:

We agree with much of that. I would make a couple of additional points. For us, it is critical that the universal payment remain in place. On the additional payment, I agree with Ms O'Brien. She and I have been part of the NESC, which has done a huge amount of work over the years trying to work this out. It has been tried by different governments in different ways down the years, but never with any great success. We would need to be very careful. For a lot of people, there is a misconception that we can solve the child poverty issue without having to solve the household or family poverty issue. Some people think that if we solve child poverty, we solve overall poverty. I think that is looking at the whole issue in a disjointed way. It needs to be looked at in an integrated way that recognises and looks carefully at what any proposal that is being made would result in, what additional money would go into a household and what difference that would make, bearing in mind that the basic welfare rate for an adult or for two adults is far below what is required to live life with basic dignity. There is a very serious challenge here. Our view always has been that if there are resources available, the best approach is to drive the adult rates and then drive the children subsequently.