Sean Barrett (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State. I commend the Minister, Deputy Burton, on her level of financial expertise, which has not been seen in the Department of Social Protection previously. She is combining the work she did as her party's very effective finance spokesman with her new area of responsibility. I will not intrude into the timeframe to which we wish to adhere.

We need to consider the integration of the tax and welfare systems, as proposed by Milton Friedman many years ago when he advocated a negative income tax. Too much means testing is taking place. We are producing the poverty traps about which several Senators have spoken. If we are going to be radical, as we should in a country that had to be bailed out by the IMF not that long ago, we should consider the integration of the tax and welfare systems. Where it has been proposed, it has typically been resisted by the bureaucracies on the tax and expenditure sides.

Each of our social welfare systems should reach the target group and that group only. The payment of universal child benefit to the wealthiest people in the country, who are well outside any target group, has to be put on the agenda. We should be cautious with the proposal to extend the medical card to the entire population. What is the point in giving medical cards to millionaires at a time when the country is broke and other priorities need to be addressed? Low administration costs are needed. That is another reason to consider the integration of the tax and welfare systems. We need measures that do not distort the choice between working and not working, or between phoning in sick and not doing do. Non-demeaning benefits are essential because we should be trying to help people rather than turn them away.

We have to question what we have done to make child care so expensive in a country that has an unemployment rate of 14.5%. Did we gold-plate the child care industry during the Celtic tiger era?