Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

That is what I am talking about - the people who receive the half-rate payment and receive an underlying social welfare payment, those who get an extra payment for caring for more than one person and those on the respite allowance. There are very generous income disregards and the payment is considerably higher than the payment for disability, invalidity and so on. Therefore, what I sought to do and have done was to make sure those arrangements that are so valued by carers are kept intact.

A suggestion was made earlier that, among the many easy answers, we would put a levy on pension funds. As Minister with responsibility for pension funds, I know many pension funds throughout the country are already in deficit and to add another pension levy would only exacerbate the situation. In fact, the budget seeks to do the opposite and to try to make defined benefit and defined contribution pension funds more solvent so they can give people fair returns for their investments. The easy solution would be robbing Peter to pay Paul.

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