Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

No, therefore, there is no question of us simply adopting one model over the others.

The Government has already accepted that there are different cost implications for different groups. The early child care allowance was introduced in the first instance because of the particularly high child care costs involved in rearing very young children. That is why children under the age of six were particularly targeted in that respect. The child benefit payment targets families with children. The success of targeting pensioners has been indicated by the reduction to 2.2% of the number of people, particularly pensioners, living in consistent poverty. Therefore, the Government recognises that different people and groups need to be targeted in different ways, but our overall aim is to ensure the general rate of social welfare payments will continue to increase.

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