Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I listened with great interest to what the witnesses have had to say. We must start making choices. Regarding what Dr. Brewer has said, a theoretical simple system might look very attractive but my first question is, if it was decided to go to universal credit or some system of universal payment, how long would it take to get there? Second, when the system was introduced, from what I understand there was still a means-testing element. Did the anomalies and unfairness of the existing means-tested payment carry forward? I do not know how means testing worked in the UK, I will come to that in a minute taking where we are, but did it just transfer it into a more complex system? For my third question, it appears there is a constant means test going on and that is very stressful for people who lack certainty. As for many people I deal with, I have constituents who are not into bureaucracy. They can read and write and all the rest but they are not into reading all the technicalities of a very complex system.

Is digital terrorism, as I call it, involved in this? By "digital terrorism", I mean that a person must do it digitally or forget about it. Many people can get into Facebook and such forums but they do not want to do business digitally. There is a difference. The simplest digital thing that most people can do is tap a payment on their phones, or get money out of an ATM. However, that does not mean they are going to go on a computer and do much more complex operations such as making tax returns, integrating with the social welfare system, or inputting and uploading stuff. This to me this is a form of digital terrorism against the most vulnerable people, whom we should be going out of our way to help. My next question is this: did it try to take humans out of the system? Did it remove human interaction and the ability to interact personally with the system?

At the moment the situation on disregards is that with some payments, the first €60 or whatever is disregarded. Most of those disregards have not been changed for ten to 14 years, or in some cases even longer. Traditionally there was a very high penalty on any income. Take for example a couple where one party has a small income and the other one is on jobseeker's allowance, which is means tested, as opposed to jobseeker's benefit which is not means tested and is available for up to nine months when a person has social contributions. After that the person is on jobseeker's allowance. Many people live with a partner and are means tested on that. The first €60 of the partner's income is disregarded if he or she works three days a week, after which 60% of the balance is taken. That is quite a stiff cliff. It is not quite a sheer cliff but it is stiff. That has been the case for a long time. We could do the simple thing, which is calculable and the effect is known, for example by raising that €60 disregard to €100 and reducing the 60% to 50% or maybe 40%. I am just giving figures as an example. This would improve what is there because there would be no unintended consequences. We have a lot of anomalies between self-employed income here. For farmers it is 70% of the income and for other self-employed income it is 100% of the income and so on, whereas if it is income from employment there are disregards. That is why I asked the first question about whether all the crinkles of the old means testing were carried into the new system or the means testing was reformed. It seems that one way or the other, the means test is going to be part of this. Would we be better focusing our attention on reforming our system with an eye to creating something nearer to a universal income approach, before taking a big jump and spending five or six years devising a new system that in my view would probably come with a lot of crinkles? I would be interested in the witnesses' views, if anyone wants to be brave enough to give an opinion on that.