Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

One problem about the modern world is that you get so much information but how much is useful? I find the statistics very useful but it does not break it down to the granular level to make the policy changes we need. On this side of the table, we do not get the outputs. We know how many people are on a State pension and we know how much a €1 increase costs. That is easy enough for everybody to calculate. What we do not know is how many people are getting full rates and reduced rates to give us some guess as to what happens when you start trying to amend means testing. I was given a global figure of €50 million for a package I put together in the Department. I never saw any breakdown of how that figure was arrived at but it allowed us to say €50 million. It is less than €1 across the board payment across all schemes. That is how it is measured it so that the Minister and we, as a committee, can make recommendations. We need this information. If we recommend giving €12, €13, €15 or €24 or €25 or whatever rise to everybody, or giving a €24 raise rather than €25 - give X or X minus one - if we knew what minus one was going to do and there was an alternative to the means test, we could make the recommendation that is where the choices lie. We do not have it. It is the one output I would like to have that I do not have.