Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

The Christmas bonus payment was first introduced in December 1980 for social welfare pensioners and people who depend solely on their social welfare payments for income support. There have been a number of developments in this initiative since its inception, including changes in the level of the bonus payment which has been at the rate of 100% over the past six years, the introduction of a minimum payment and the extension of the categories of eligible claimants.

The focus of the bonus has always been on assisting people who rely on the social welfare system for financial support over the longer term. These include recipients of retirement, old age — contributory and non-contributory — widow's, widower's and invalidity pensions, one-parent family payment, carer's allowance, disability allowance, long-term unemployment assistance, farm assist and people on employment support payments, for example, the back to work allowance.

The bonus is also payable to certain participants on FÁS, vocational training opportunities, job incentive and community employment schemes and to those in receipt of payment under the rural social scheme which was introduced in 2004 and operates under the aegis of my colleague the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.

The Christmas bonus payment will benefit more than 1.22 million people this year, comprising some 835,000 social welfare recipients and their 384,000 dependants. Payment of the bonus is estimated to cost almost €140 million in 2005 and payment is being made to recipients of the relevant long-term schemes this week. Of the 64,000 persons in receipt of disability or injury benefit, almost 42,400 obtain those payments for six months or longer. It is estimated that extending the bonus to those people would cost in the region of €6.75 million.

The extension of the bonus to any one category of short-term payment would inevitably lead to pressure to extend it to all other short-term payment schemes. Consequently, the implications of any amendment to the Christmas bonus must be considered in the context of competing demands for available resources.

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