Dr. Se?n Healy:

I just want to clarify a point. There are a few things that are important to pick up from the international literature that was ignored in the commission's report. For example, the international literature shows that in terms of labour market participation, the conventional option, which we have at the moment, and UBI, have very similar outcomes. What they differ on is well-being indicators. Basic income always comes out ahead on well-being indicators and it does better than the conventional option. That should have been mentioned in the report but it was completely ignored. In fact, the impression was given in the report that the opposite is the case. Well-being was ignored and the impression was given that the opposite is the case in the labour market situation.

I could go on and on, but I will make one other point on the estimated cost of basic income. The report estimated that the cost would be so high that we would have to have a tax rate of 65%. The problem is that one can have any cost one likes on a basic income simply by changing the amount paid in basic income. Even the ESRI's recent study came to four different conclusions because it looked at four options. According to it, a basic income could cost €10 billion, €37 billion, €41 billion or €50 billion. Interestingly enough, the ESRI's communication focused completely on the €50 billion. However, all proposals which have been made in Ireland were made on the basis of Exchequer neutrality. Hence, focusing merely on gross costs makes no sense whatsoever. We have put a profound amount of work - many thousands of hours – into showing how we move from gross to net in this. Why is that? It is because people are already getting welfare payments. They are not going to get basic income on top of it, if members know what I mean. Sometimes people miss the point of the real evidence that needs to be got at to show whether we should move towards a basic income. We need to have the evidence in place and for it to be done on a credible basis by credible researchers and not by people who set out to do a hatchet job in the first place. There are plenty of those around. That is the kind of approach we are talking about. We will follow the evidence and we will go with whatever the evidence tells us. The problem we have with much of the debate around basic income is that, in particular at a political and policy level, it is not based on evidence at all.