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

At the moment, and indeed for many years, the Christmas bonus is paid to pensioners and to those who are on a long-term social welfare payment for more than 15 months. In the budget we changed this so that the Christmas bonus will now be available to anyone who has been on the PUP or jobseeker's allowance for four of the last nine months. As such it is being opened up to many hundreds of thousands of people who would not have received it previously.

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