Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I met groups that represent the elderly in the course of my work and I am sure the Deputy, as a politician, meets them in the course of hers. When I ask them what they would most like to see done for them in the budget, many bring up issues of services like home-care packages. When they talk about these kinds of more budgetary measures, we hear of three issues. They are the €5 increase in the pension, the restoration of the telephone allowance and reduction or elimination of prescription charges. I would love to achieve all those but that will not be possible in this budget. I hope we will be able to make a start on it in this budget and achieve the other measures in subsequent budgets but, obviously, we must balance the books.

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