Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is categorically not discriminatory. If it was, somebody would have already taken and tested a case against it, and that has not happened. It has not because there is a choice for young people under 25 years of age so that if they need €198 to live on, they will move to one of the other schemes that is available to them to move to at any time during it. There are additional lower rates of payments for the people the Deputy has just described that it does not apply to. Anybody who had a job who loses it does not go back down to the payment of €102. People who are under 26 who have a qualified child stay on the higher rate of income. People who transfer to jobseeker's allowance immediately after exhausting their entitlements from jobseeker's benefit stay on the higher payment. People who make claims for jobseeker's allowance where the claim is linked to a jobseeker's allowance claim within the previous 12 months stay on the higher rate. The Deputy should know his facts before he comes in and makes sweeping statements that are completely untrue.

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