John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It has been a long meeting and I have only two points.

I wish to reinforce a point that Senator Butler made on what payments local authorities take into account. In my constituency, there are problems with what the local authority deems as income. For example, with carers, child maintenance - which is really a payment for the child and should not really be taken into consideration as household income - is taken into consideration in some local authorities. I wanted to touch on that point.

The Minister answered some of the points on the fuel allowance. I made some specific remarks on fuel poverty and the fuel allowance. I hear what the Minister is saying. She is looking at rowing back on some of the cuts that have been made in previous years. Hopefully, the cuts in the number of weekly payments made in fuel allowance will be one of those changes.

I made a specific point around a dedicated automatic payment that kicks in. Hopefully, that will be up for consideration. The Minister might elaborate on that.