Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Does the Minister expect that she will be able to publish something following her consultation that we could all read and see how it relates to the poverty levels and so on? The survey on income and living conditions, SILC, published by the Central Statistics Office, CSO, in 2017 showed that one in five households with children was living below the poverty line. The Government committed to trying to take 100,000 children out of poverty. That is intimately related to the transfer payments and if we went down the index-linked route having a benchmark of adequacy is the key requirement. The Parliamentary Budget Office, PBO, has been very critical of the ad hocway we have done the Christmas bonus and increases over the years, rather than planning the expenditure and saying we will do this indefinitely. The Minister might have seen a report at the weekend by Professor Jan Rigby of Maynooth University, stating that the increase in life expectancy rates had fallen during the austerity years which is a damning reflection on our social protection system.

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