Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In last year's budget, my priority was to target resources at the most vulnerable, which was why we increased the qualified child payments, the living alone allowance and the fuel allowance as well as making changes to the one-parent family payment. I also extended the hot school meals programme to an additional 35,000 children with 189 new schools benefiting. This year's budget will be framed as we continue, we hope, to emerge from the pandemic.

The total expenditure on all Covid supports to date is more than €28 billion. Because of the sound economic decisions made by the previous Government, we were able to pump money into the economy during the pandemic. During the financial crisis, we needed to take the money out and it has been the opposite this time around, but that is also borrowed money and ultimately we will need to pay it back.

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