asked the Minister for Social Welfare if he is aware that a person who is over 18 years of age and in receipt of £19.60 unemployment assistance can have his assistance reduced to £3 per week if his father moves to a better paid job; if he considers this to be a fair implementation of the unemployment assistance system; and if not, the proposals he has to ensure that unemployed young people will have access to adequate independent means.

Under the legislation governing the scheme of unemployment assistance the value of the benefit which an applicant derives from board and lodgings in his parents home must be taken into account. The amount assessed for this purpose depends on the income of the parents in each individual case and any change in that income affects the value of board and lodgings. This arrangement ensures that a degree of equity is achieved as between an applicant whose parents are in relatively better off circumstances and an applicant whose circumstances are poor. Otherwise the situation would arise where the applicant from the better off family would receive the same amount of unemployment assistance as the applicant whose family circumstances are poor.

The means test for unemployment assistance is designed to ensure that all applicants for unemployment assistance are treated in an equitable manner having regard to the resources available to them and as operated it is a fair and reasonable method of determining entitlement and allocating scarce resources to those in greatest need.

The Minister cannot be serious when he claims that £3 to a young man of 19 is a fair and adequate allocation of resources. Does he not realise that that £3, apart from having to buy shoes and clothing and so on, would get him approximately twice a week across this city by bus and no more? How does he expect such a young person to look for a job on £3 a week from one end of the week to the other?

I assure the Deputy I can be very serious about this because, as I stated in my reply, account must be taken of the value the applicant derives in board and lodgings and that in turn is related to the income of the parents. The Deputy in his question did not quote the income of the parents and he does not give any particulars. Therefore I do not know the details, but having regard to the fact that the rate has been reduced to £3 per week that would indicate that the parents' net income after deduction of PAYE and PRSI would be in the region of £10,000. With scarce resources it is not possible to apply unemployment assistance without having any regard to the income of the parents. Even if additional resources became available I would do what I could to use such resources to help the unemployed young people whose parents are unemployed or very poor, not people whose parents are relatively better off.

The nub of this problem arises from the fact that in the social welfare code a young person between 16 and 25 years is regarded as a dependant of his or her parents once he or she is living in the house. Would the Minister not consider that that is an unfair way of dealing with young people in this day and age? Will he consider changing that system of dependency?

In one sense it might be unfair but it is far from unfair to make the point that a young person living with his parents who could be extremely wealthy would get the same rate of unemployment assistance as young people living in households where the parents were unemployed. I could not implement such a scheme at the present time because any additional resources that might be made available to me would not be devoted to that purpose but to helping less well off applicants.

We are now having a debate on the policy involved in this question and that could become a substantial debate. This is not the appropriate time to discuss such a matter. It would be more appropriate on the Department's Estimate or on the Social Welfare Bill which will be coming before the House shortly.

I simply wish to put one final question to the Minister. Does the Minister not agree that there are very few wealthy people, if any, living in the Dublin North-West constituency?

That is a statistical question.

Would he also not agree that it is unacceptable for a young man of 19 years to have to try to survive on £3 a week? Does he not agree that, regardless of the income of a parent, £3 a week is not an adequate income for an unemployed young man or woman in this day and age?

That is a policy matter which could be debated another time. Question No. 6.

6.