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

It is not just the Deputy. This goes back to my theme that when any reform or change produces winners or losers, it is of course those people who lose out who will come to Deputies' offices - for all the obvious reasons - and not those who have benefitted or who are better off. That is inevitable when one makes any reform.

We are working on the amendment for Report Stage of the Social Welfare Bill 2016. It is going to be an independent report, not done in-house by my Department, so it will have to go through the tender process. We will put the timelines into the Report Stage amendment. Ideally we would like to have it done before June 2017 so that it can inform decisions made for the next budget. I do not have exact timelines but that is the intention. The only thing that might go against us in that regard is that if it is going to be an independent report it has to be externally sourced and we must go through a public tender system for that.

See this speech in context