Pearse Doherty (Sinn Fein)

The reality is that the Minister has removed the incentive for those who want to go on to third level. Those in receipt of the back to education allowance will no longer be eligible to receive maintenance grants. The maintenance grant for those who are eligible has been cut by 5%. We need to be clear about this.

I asked the Minister a question to try to cut through all the spin about us having the most generous social welfare system in Europe. She is able to use the comparison argument when she talks about the Government's capital spend in comparison with that elsewhere in Europe. I acknowledge her answer that some benefits are time limited, income related and so on. However, the reality is that the rates for somebody who is 24 years of age or older or younger in any of the EU15, bar two, are higher than the current rates in Ireland. I am not even talking about the cut of more than 50%. The Minister should acknowledge that we have third lowest social welfare rate for single individuals in the EU15. She should then argue with conviction why we should reduce it even further.

The Minister referred to the Official Report. I asked her a specific question about brothers. She said we would not discriminate between them because this did not affect anybody who was working.