Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will come to that issue in a moment. I am happy to answer as many questions as I manage to note. To finish the point I was making, we need to bear in mind that all these things cost money and all are paid for by other people who do not receive a bonus or may receive a much smaller bonus. The cost of the Christmas bonus is €220 million per annum and will be funded through a supplementary allocation to my Department. This relevant Supplementary Estimate will come before the select committee this week. Half of the additional funding will come from the Social Insurance Fund, in other words, PRSI contributions. This is not unusual as the cost of payments has always been paid for in this way. The other half will be paid for by additional voted expenditure for my Department, which will come from direct taxation.

We already have two annual reports on child poverty. The Central Statistics Office produces an annual survey of income and living conditions, as does my Department's social inclusion monitor. For this reason, we do not propose to accept a legislative obligation to have another report done.

If it is worth doing an independent report on one-parent family reforms, I would like to receive it well before the summer recess in order that it can feed into decisions that may be made in the next budget. The report will be independent and must be tendered because it will not be done by my Department. We must ensure it is not solely based on interviews with individuals and advocacy groups, as has been the case with other reports, but includes objective econometric analysis. It is for this reason that the report must be tendered and I intend to have it by June. The timeframe of nine months has been set not as a target but because of the way the tendering process works. We intend to have the report in six months if possible.

On qualified adults, once the necessary resources become available, we very much want to extend activation to qualified adults. With the fall in unemployment, we are approaching the point at which resources will be available. I am not sure if it would be sensible not to have any sanctions available given that every other working age payment has some form of conditionality attached to it. I do not see why there should not be conditionality applied to payments made to qualified adults. Legislation would be required to do this, however, as it is not provided for in the Bill.

Senator Kevin Humphreys asked that we re-examine community employment, Tús and the Gateway scheme to reflect the changing economic times and the significant change in the profile of people who are unemployed in the past three or four years. This is already being done. I have not provided in the Estimates for changes to the materials and training grant but I will definitely try to do so in the next budget. Senator Humphreys also made the case for mainstreaming some community employment jobs into regular jobs, particularly in the area of the provision of social care services, for example, meals on wheels and home help services. Although I agree with him, responsibility for this matter extends beyond my Department. Nevertheless, his suggestion would make sense in the medium term.

Child poverty is tackled in three ways. It is not only a matter of transfers and payments but also employment and services. The focus in the budget in respect of children has been very much on services, rather than payments. For example, a new child care subsidy will be introduced in 2017. We have also provided for medical cards to be issued to children with disabilities, the recruitment of additional special needs assistants and the provision of school meals.While some Senators are saying that we should not have had the €5 at all and that it should have gone into services, others are saying we should have an increase for children. I suppose what we decided to do is give the cash increase to adults and the services to children on this occasion but all these things are judgement calls. Where I hope to go next year in budget 2018 is the working family payment - bringing together the family income supplement and the qualified child payments into something new. We are working on that at the moment.

Senator Norris asked about pension rights for the self-employed. It is already the case that self-employed people who pay PRSI are entitled to the State contributory pension on the same basis as employees. This has been the case for some time but it does speak to a very valid point. I come across it all the time, namely, that self-employed people do not know what they are and are not entitled to. In the new year, I intend to launch a campaign aimed at the self-employed to let them know what their existing and new entitlements are because there is huge confusion about that. I meet people who are self-employed who say they pay PRSI and get nothing for it where the most valuable thing they get is the State contributory pension. If someone was to build up a pension pot to the value of the State contributory pension, they would need build up savings of about €300,000 to €400,000 so that 4% is good value if you look at that way.

The Trinity College pension is a public sector pension matter and a matter for the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. I heard the interview on the radio and am very sympathetic to the case that has been made but I have not heard the other side of the story so it is probably best that I do not comment on something that is the responsibility of another Minister.