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

I thank the Deputies. For those people who are in receipt of social welfare payments, an increase for a qualified child will be paid up to the age of 22 or until the end of the academic year in which they reach 22. This approach ensures targeted assistance that is directly linked to household income and thereby supports low-income families with older children participating in full-time education. I take the Deputies' points. Keeping a child in full-time education is expensive. Budgets are also about choices. We are providing €2.2 billion in supports, between the various lump-sum payments and the changes which will take effect from January. It represents the largest social protection budget in the history of the State, but even with that, we cannot do everything that we want to. There are other things that we would like to do, but at the end of the day, the Government has to cut its cloth to measure. I prioritised the double payment of child benefit in the budget, which will support 639,000 families with 1.2 million children. That measure alone will cost €170 million, which demonstrates the scale of the calls for any changes to child benefit. I hear the point about somebody who is older than 18 and still in full-time second level education.

However, if we expanded the child benefits currently in place it would have cost implications into the future. In budget 2023 it was decided to target low-income families on a long-term basis through providing for the increases in the personal rates of payment and increases for the qualified child as well as increases in the working family payment income threshold. The Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris, announced a comprehensive package in the budget to reduce the cost of third level education. The income limit for the student contribution 50% grant has been increased to €62,000 and student maintenance grants will increase in January. There is a €30 million increase in funding to increase capacity for apprenticeships in 2023. When these changes are seen in the round there is a good deal of support to help both working families and those who are not in receipt of social welfare payments. However my job as Minister for Social Protection is to target those who are least well off in our society. Looking at the whole package that we put together it is a very comprehensive budget package.

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