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

It would be fair to say that my Department has had a fairly busy year. I know the Deputy appreciates that. Some 24 million individual payments have been issued to almost 900,000 people. Our priority has been to get these payments to people. If we had not done that, we would rightly be criticised here. I assure the Deputy that I will consider the poverty impact assessment and publish it afterwards. I am happy to have a further conversation with the Deputy at that stage. I will see what the report says and will certainly look at this issue. The programme for Government commits to looking at improvements to jobseeker's supports for young people, which I am committed to examining. I will also engage with representatives from various youth representative groups as part of my Department's pre-budget forum. I want to hear what they have to say about this.

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