Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

If Deputy O'Reilly would like to drop me a line on that, I will follow up on it. I know more than most the value of school caretakers, particularly to the teachers.

I congratulate Deputy O'Connor on his appointment as Chairman of the employment and enterprise committee. I look forward to working with him. In that context, we need to ensure that the social protection system can be worker friendly. Welfare traps which are inhibiting people from taking up work need to be removed. For instance, if a person on jobseeker's allowance receives an offer of part-time work, they can end up worse off financially if their hours are spread over the entire week rather than concentrated over three days or less. That is an anomaly I want to address.

As stated, we will be introducing a working-age payment to remove inconsistencies and anomalies in the current jobseeker's payments that are discouraging people from taking up employment. One of the proposed models is to change the basis of the current payment structure in order that a person's payment will be based on a percentage of the difference between their income and a specified threshold for the family type. The purpose of that change would be to take advantage of real-time PAYE information and to move from the days-of-work approach to an income-based approach. That would mean that a person should always be better off by taking up employment. However, I will be publishing draft proposals for full consultation with stakeholders and Oireachtas committees before we agree any final design of what a working-age payment might look like.

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