Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

In regard to the point raised by Senator Phelan, when responding to an identical proposal made in the other House the argument that the commitment to those families should be equated with increases in the home carer's credit is flawed. Significant improvements in take-home pay have resulted from the budgetary measures being provided for in the Finance Bill. Finite resources mean choices must be made. The spokesperson in the other House would claim I am spending too much money. How he is going to square that with his prospective Labour Party partners over the weekend will be interesting. The choices made in the budget were designed to take minimum wage earners out of the tax net completely this year.

As regards the question of putting a complete individualisation structure in place, one has to consider that in the context of the priorities at any given time. The cost of doing it would be in the region of €720 million which is a significant amount of money, quite apart from anything else one would want to do in terms of widening the bands or whatever.