Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is the case that there has been some inflation since 2009. The changes that happened in social welfare in the past five years can be placed in two categories: those that were part of a reform system designed to encourage more people to become included in society and the economy by taking up work, and others that were done to save money. In the next couple of years I want to start reversing the ones that were done just to save money. To reverse them all would cost somewhere between €3 billion and €4 billion, which is an enormous amount of money, but perhaps we can start doing that and restoring some of the basic weekly payments at the rate of inflation or above over the next couple of years. That is something I would very much like to do.

We touched on statistics when I mentioned the SILC data. As the Deputy will be aware, the most recent data we have is only from 2014, but that did indicate that basic deprivation rates were starting to fall. They fell between 2013 and 2014. We do not have the 2015 figures yet-----

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