Mr. Ciarán Nugent:

The Deputy is talking about top earners. That is an inequality measure and is about the distribution of living standards in a country. We talked about income taxation, etc., and how that is tied into welfare provision and how that then affects poverty and the distribution of living standards in Irish society. We are of course judging ourselves over time and against peer countries and how we are doing in those respects. If average earnings are going up by 4% this year, which is about where they are going, and we find out next year that it was a reflection of a 10% increase at the top and 0% increase for the bottom half, those are policy-relevant issues, especially when we talk about housing, deprivation and people unable to afford the bills and then of course-----