Deputy Speaker, we have heard anecdotes of young mothers who are spending the money on their hair and things like that. We are taking these issues seriously. But I must say that the studies and research we have done produced empirical evidence allowing us to determine that, in terms of the registration of new children entering the system, most of the registrations are actually done after two years of age. That tells us, in fact, that if young mothers were indeed registering their children for the purposes of using this money for something else, they would register them right in the first month after birth.
So, this is actually something that we have been able to prove. However, recently we have adopted a mechanism of attaching conditions. I must say that these are soft conditions, not hard conditions, meaning we are not going to be taking any money from any child. There is an agreement between ourselves and the Department of Basic Education that there will be an exchange of reports from time to time on children who may not be attending school. We can then release social workers to go into those families and find out what the challenges are so that we are able to deal with the problems.
In other words, if the child's benefit is being used for anything else, we will be able to detect that through this mechanism and be able to deal with that particular case instead of just sweeping everything under the carpet and it becoming just anecdotal.
It is a matter that we take seriously, as I said. That's why we introduced these conditions. It doesn't mean we will take those monies away from children, but we will really drill deep down into what the problems are and how the money is being used and correct that. Thank you very much. [Applause.]