Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

They are linked. If a person is in receipt of the new payment, he must be in receipt of child benefit. Our figures were based on that. The numbers are not huge as of now but we must protect the position. We are talking about a small number of thousands. In child benefit cases, we would be talking about less than 2,000, while benefit might be double that. I was aware of this and discussed it with the Department of Social and Family Affairs as far back as October. When we were doing our work on the child benefit costs, the cadre of resources in that was based on the new benefit so there is a direct link between the two.

Hopefully, in all these issues where there are reciprocal arrangements, there is no problem with something that has existed for 36 years as long as it does not escalate into big numbers. We have taken a more generous position than others but that changes for all the other member states on 1 May. For people who did not make our moves on 1 May 2004 the two years are up.

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