Increases in key social welfare payments supporting the poorest children will be at the centre of next month’s social protection budget package, Minister Dara Calleary has said.
“I am going to be very focused on prioritising child poverty,” he told The Irish Times. “I am not just saying it for the sake of saying it. I really want at the end of my term here to have made a difference and we start in this budget.”
With “the backing of the Taoiseach” his attention will be on enhancing supports to lone parents, working-poor families and welfare-dependent families.
Among payments he wants to increase are the child support payment (in respect of children whose parents are on welfare, worth €50 per week for under 12s and €62 for those aged 12 and older), and the working family payment (a weekly support for low-paid workers with children).
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Other payments specifically targeting lone parents, including the one-parent family payment (to lone parents whose youngest child is under seven, currently €244 a week maximum) and the jobseeker’s transitional payment (to lone parents whose youngest child is between seven and 13 years, maximum €244 per week), are being looked at for increases or changes to income disregards.
Last week, along with Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Mr Calleary set a new child poverty target: to reduce the numbers in consistent poverty from 8.5 per cent to 3 per cent “or less” by 2030. “I want it to be 0 per cent, but we have to be credible as well.”
A high-level, cross-departmental child poverty unit has been established in the Department of the Taoiseach to lead the effort.
Achieving progress will happen by tackling the “complex issue” in a “focused way” said the Minister, “going in hard on specifics”.
Mr Calleary wants to bring in a second-tier child benefit, replacing other payments, as recommended by the Economic and Social Research Institute, but to do it without leaving some children worse off.
The intricacies of achieving that have not yet been worked out, he said. It will not happen in Budget 2026.
Asked about “ramping up” the child support payment in the meantime, he said: “That is what we are going to be doing anyway. We ramped it up about 52 per cent [since 2021] and put on a big distinction for the under 12s and over 12s. I want to continue that.”
“The lone-parent poverty rate in the last SILC [survey of income and living conditions] was 11 per cent, versus 5 per cent in the population on average. [We] cannot have that kind of poverty level. The journey they have to do in terms of rearing a child is extraordinary.”
Referencing too the 50,000 families in receipt of the working-family payment, he said: “That’s the focus. We’ll tell you everything on October 7th but I go into my negotiations with the [Department of Public Expenditure] around child supports, with the Taoiseach’s backing.”
Issues affecting child poverty that weren’t “purely income-related” included education, employment, housing, affordable childcare, access to timely healthcare – all of which would be tackled by the new child poverty unit, he said.
The lead departments on these issues were involved in the new unit in the Taoiseach’s department. Greater co-operation and less siloed thinking was critical.
“We need to get out of the way of people ... to make people’s lives easier. Silos, a department saying, ‘We only do this, you have to talk to the other department’. That day is gone. We have to talk about the child, the dad, the mother – the person. While we don’t talk to each other somebody is losing out.”
Progress on reaching the child poverty target would be monitored. “It will be reviewed in 2028 but I will know well before that if we are not reaching it. I am going to be on the review process ... the team in the Taoiseach’s department will be keeping me under pressure on it.”
His second big focus will be on disability – supporting disabled people into employment, and better supporting carers.
He said previously it was “just not acceptable” that Ireland had one of the highest disabled unemployment rates in the EU. He again urged employers to explore the supports his department provided to those who recruit disabled workers.
“I would say to companies your staff, your customers and your bottom line will gain from this. In a time of full employment companies are missing out if they don’t look at employing people with disabilities.”
To disabled people worried about losing their welfare payments if taking up work doesn’t work out, he said the department would ensure payments were restored “immediately, no questions asked”.
He was determined to reduce “delays” in accessing the domiciliary care allowance and the means test for the carers allowance would be gone “by the end of this Government”.
Removing the means test would “probably” mean more carers applying for it, he said.
All payments from his department, he said, were an “investment” in society, and were “re-spent in the local economy”.
“And the money that is spent on carers, what money extra would we be spending in the health budget if it was not for our amazing carers around the country?”
He predicts “teething problems” with the start of auto-enrolment from January 1st. Workers aged between 23 and 60 earning €20,000 or more, who have no retirement-saving plan, face having 1.5 per cent deducted from their wages for the compulsory scheme. Employers and Government will also contribute to workers’ future funds.
“I know people are saying that people don’t have the money for it, but the purpose of doing it now is you will have that money when you retire,” said Mr Calleary.
