Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

I am coming at things from a slightly different angle on the same point. If the intention in focusing on fraud is really about reducing the social welfare bill, would it not also be quite important to focus on ridiculous anomalies such as, for example, the case of a young man named Fergus O'Farrell, who is mentioned in a question further down the list? He wants to go on the back to education allowance but is deemed ineligible because he is too young and so is being forced to drop out of college and go back on the dole. Consequently, he will spend nine months longer on the dole, whereas he wants to go to college but cannot get the allowance to do so. Should we not examine such anomalies involving people who want to get back into education so they can be trained and upskilled rather than being dependent on social welfare? The current system is forcing them back onto dependency on social welfare.

See this speech in context