Proponents of the scheme, announced by Social Protection Minister Heather Humphreys, point out that better-developed welfare states in the EU operate like this, as higher earners often have higher fixed outgoings – bills, mortgages and so forth.

The total cost of these higher payments to the State might be low since higher earners are less likely to lose their jobs and more likely to regain work. Indeed, the additional benefit tapers off, giving people time to adjust, reset and ideally find another job.

But is this the welfare modernisation we need?

The idea of higher welfare for higher earners reflects the idea of social insurance, dating back centuries, before the universal welfare state. The Scottish Widows fund in 1815 is probably the first, but mainly social insurance emerged around particular industries around a century ago, where workers paid into a fund to mitigate the potential impact of redundancy, bankruptcy or accident.

By contrast, the Irish welfare state is currently based on universal provision: Everyone is entitled to the same amount, a carefully calibrated payment to prevent the worst hardships of poverty. Creating income index payments flies in the face of this egalitarian principle.

Irish social welfare is about the existential promise of security. Everyone, rich or poor, benefits from this promise; the State will support you, everyone you know and love, and every stranger you meet, should they lose their income. In a time riddled with anxiety and precarity, where everyone feels a little more vulnerable, it is a mighty promise.

There are special and exceptional payments within the existing system, for instance, for dependent children or fuel allowances. These are targeted by the State, rather than a calculus which discriminates between applicants with lower and higher incomes.

Recessions can lead to mortgage defaults or inability to pay rent, but if this problem re-emerges it needs to be dealt with in concert with the banks and local authorities, rather than through the welfare system.

Instituting income-linked unemployment payments risks undermining the general satisfaction with the existing welfare system in Ireland. After some years of imitating the harsh welfare systems of the UK, US and Australia, we seem to have returned to a relatively stable and supportive system. The PUP payment was an extraordinary moment for the Irish system. While successful in terms of generating broad acceptance of lockdowns and supporting furloughed households, a core tension in PUP was the lack of targeting to need.

A tapered amount based on prior income is an arbitrary sum, unlinked to an individual’s specific needs and has no regard for redundancy, savings or exit packages.

So, income-linked welfare carries considerable deadweight. Indeed, it introduces a new sense of dread in the unemployed as their income is tapered and they feel themselves running out of road.

Our welfare system does fail people, but more often in the failure to deliver adequate comprehensive social services in education, childcare, public health services and especially housing. Fixing these services should be the primary task of welfare reform, money is the last resort.

Indeed, our welfare state should be much more than a cash machine dispensing different amounts to different people. It requires justification for the care it provides. Re-calibrating payments reduces political and policy choices to economics or accountancy, even arithmetic.

How the State spends its money is always a political question, expressing priorities and values.

Yet our political imagination should not be limited to the question of where and when the tap of cash is turned on, and for whom and how much.

Reconstituting our economy for a higher quality of life, ecological sustainability and more security requires more imagination than income-linked welfare. Beyond the ‘whole of government’ challenge to deliver better public services, our system of social welfare needs gentle readjustment towards the de-growth, work-life balance, hybrid and working for home, caring and parenting priorities.

The convergence of all three large political parties to a battle for votes in the middle ground means that political imagination is reduced to the question of ‘how much?’ If the current thinking is as limited as giving more support to higher-earners, then it is imagination not cash which is in short supply.​

Tom Boland is a lecturer in Sociology at University College Cork and Ray Griffin is a lecturer in Strategic Management at the South East Technological University