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

I imagine the €12.70 figure relates to what used to be £10. As such, I suspect it has not been increased for a very long time. I want to be as helpful here as possible and to understand this better myself. I am having trouble understanding how this impacts on individual cases and I would welcome a report to understand it myself. I can direct officials to get started on that straight away with a view to having it in March or April to inform any budget decisions we might make. As Deputy Pringle mentioned, if we are talking about €30 million or €40 million, it may not appear to be a lot in the context of a budget of €20,000 million, but that is not far off what is required to reinstate the telephone allowance and is almost double the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance. It would, therefore, be one of those many things one has to make choices about and, as such, I would like to know what the choices are exactly and how much each potential change would cost. That is why it would be valuable to do this work. We will certainly get it done as soon as we can.

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