Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys set out increased payments for pensioners, carers, people with disabilities and working families with children in what she described as her department’s “largest budget package in the history of the State”.
The most significant features of the €2.6 million package are a weekly €12 increase in core social welfare payments, two double payments of child benefit – €280 each – before Christmas and a series of lump-sum payments before Christmas.
These include €400 to those in receipt of disability allowance and carers allowance; a €300 lump-sum to those in receipt of the fuel allowance; a €100 lump sum for each child in receipt of the child-support payment (the new name for the qualified child payment which is paid in respect of every child of a person dependent on social welfare), and two double payments of all core welfare payments – one in October and one in December.
Other measures include a new payment for the parents of newborn babies equivalent to two child benefit payments in addition to the first child benefit (total €420) to help with the additional costs There are increases in the weekly child support payment, paid in respect of the poorest children: an increase of €4 to €50 for children under 12 and an increase of €8 to €62 for those aged 12 and over. This is the largest ever increase in the payment.
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Introducing details of the package on Tuesday, Ms Humphreys said the package was “about putting money in people’s pockets ... to help them with the cost of living”.
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Among the measures she most welcomed was the expansion of the hot school-meals programme to every primary school.
“Every primary schoolchild in the country will receive a hot dinner in the middle of the day in 2025. Having grown this programme from a small pilot of 30 schools to all the primary schools is one of my proudest achievements in politics,” she said.
In addition, a pilot project to tackle “holiday hunger” among the poorest children will start in summer 2025.
Carers’ benefit will be extended to the self-employed, while the income disregard – the amount a person can earn without their carers’ allowance being affected – will increase to €625 a week for a single person and €1,250 for couples. In addition, the carers’ allowance will be a qualifying payment for the fuel allowance, worth €33 a week between September and April.
The working family payment income disregard is also increasing, for all family sizes, by €60 a week.
The Minister did not want “any older person afraid to turn on their heating”, she said.
Anyone aged over 66 will be eligible to apply for the fuel allowance from January, with a means-test disregard of €524 a week for a single person and €1,048 for a couple.
Asked about reports that she had wanted increases in core payments focused on pensioners, carers and working families and had not favoured increases in jobseekers’ benefit to the long-term unemployed, she said her department supported the unemployed, including with training courses. Employment opportunities were plentiful, she said.
“[The long-term unemployed] will be monitored very, very closely and if they don’t engage they will be penalised,” she said.
She said the country was at “full employment” and you could hear from any business that “their biggest problem is they can’t get workers”.
“We are giving supports to reskill, upskill and to assist people to get into work. At time when there is full employment people should be making every effort to take up [work],” she said.
She said that the long-term unemployed, who were not engaging, were already having payments cut, but they would receive extra payments if they did engage with training and activation measures.
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