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

I accept the Deputy's point about the disincentive effect. People will not try to earn another €50 per week off farm or doing something else if the €50 will be deducted from their payments. However, the Deputy, as somebody who held my office in the past, will understand any change has knock-on effects on everything else and, when one has limited budgets, to fund changing the 100% to 70% or 80%, one might have to reduce the qualifying figure for the means test. One must examine these matters in the round and assess what any change would cost and how it might impact on the scheme and on other schemes. The Deputy's basic point is common sense. While I do not want to predetermine the outcome of the review, one of the things I am minded to do is to decrease the 100%.

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