Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

That is our intention. The work of the Department is to help those who are struggling. To give the Deputy a sense of the complexity of this, one of the considerations in the ESRI proposal was to amalgamate the working family payment with the child support payment but that would result in people losing out on what they are getting at the moment. If we are to do this, people cannot lose out. We have to look at expanding the working family payment and the child support payment as part of targeted measures. Anything we do in this space needs to be targeted and focused on those on low incomes, particularly workers. We have to ensure that people do not get a lower payment under a new system than they are currently getting. That could be an unintended consequence of some of the work we have seen today. Whatever we do will be targeted and focused on those most at risk of poverty and those in consistent poverty. I welcome the Deputy's acknowledgement that there are other Departments involved in this effort as well. We need to work on it collectively.

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