Mr. Ciarán Nugent:

The CSO conducts this survey. It rings around, mostly on the phone; it is not going to get the likes of Denis O'Brien on the phone. That is basically the concept. Piketty, the famous French economist, has got his own inequality lab and he makes estimates every year as well. They are more about shares rather than this Gini coefficient, which is kind of a summary indicator. It is hard to interpret what going up or going down means for certain sections of society. The easier way to interpret income inequality, for me anyway, is to ask what share of income goes to the top 10%. What share goes to the top 1%? Basically, in Ireland over the last five or six years, the share going to the top 10% has increased more than it has in any other high-income EU country. It is the second-highest out of 15 countries. Greece is the only country that has a higher share in before-tax income. Obviously, we know that the State has to do a lot of heavy lifting in bringing about more equal outcomes in income but, obviously, that is just income. When we are talking about living standards, poverty, etc., obviously, the role of the State and welfare provision is part of tackling poverty by socialising costs to not just make living costs lower in terms of health and childcare and all those kinds of things, but also more competitive. We have this relatively small welfare state, and we also have this high level of inequality. That is why we are getting this 20%. The ESRI stated that 20% of children, after household costs, are at risk of poverty. I think that is an underestimate. It is probably over 20%, at least, who are in deprivation in this social inclusion indicator. It is somewhere around 17% or 18% if we just look at deprivation, which is basically children who are living in houses where the household is unable to afford a certain amount of goods out of a list of goods that most people consider to be essential, and that is continual.

I will say one other thing about household level data and especially about deprivation and living standards. We have had this massive increase in the number of young adults unable to move out of home. Their individual circumstances are not described in these household-level surveys because of the fact that they are still living at home. That disposable income the Deputy is talking about that goes up could be a compositional issue, maybe not of a tech worker but a teacher or a garda in his or her late 20s or early 30s who moves back home with €40,000 and then, all of a sudden, the average household income goes up by €40,000 because they moved back home. This also affects the deprivation rates because by definition they are deprived of independent living and adulthood. Again, it is another-----