Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael)

I want to pick up on a theme that Senator Fitzgerald mentioned in her contribution, when she called for a debate on competitiveness and particularly on the interaction between our welfare system and how people work. There is an excellent analysis in The Irish Times today that merits discussion here. It compares the income for a married couple working in the PAYE sector with two children versus that of someone on social welfare. The income of a family working in the PAYE sector earning €35,000 - once tax is deducted and all the benefits are added - moves up to €36,078. An equivalent family on social welfare, with two children and neither parent working, will have a gross income of €40,261. There is difference between them of over €4,000. One of the things we learned when emerging from the last recession was the creation of so-called poverty traps. In that case, there was no incentive for those on social welfare to work.