Ms Susanne Rogers:

For Social Justice Ireland individualisation is key. At present somebody on social welfare claiming for another adult in the household receives 0.66% of the payment. Individualisation would go a long way towards equality proofing and gender proofing. Earlier we touched on family status. At present cohabiting is considered for a couple for welfare but not for taxation. A cohabiting couple cannot claim tax free allowances or share them. This can be done only when people are married. We can see immediately that there is an anomaly. Benchmarking is another key element. It has become far more important. We need to get to adequacy first. We have already mentioned that every prebudget submission had sought an increase of €20. The increase was €12 and we are still looking for the other €8. This has to be done and then benchmarked. I know there is a lot of discussion about what benchmark would be chosen. Ours is 27.5% of average earnings. If we were asked which two we would like and I had a magic wand these are the two that would go a long way towards alleviating poverty throughout the country.