Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the Deputy's sentiments, and I support the benchmarking approach. I will give a little detail on it. The Government decision specified that calculation be submitted to Government as an input to its deliberations. This is because it is important the Government retains the ability to explore various options based on prevailing circumstances. In the case of the budgets in 2023 and 2024, the Government decided it was preferable to front-load the payments in order that people would have money when they most needed it, rather than spread over 52 weeks. As the ESRI analysis shows, this delivers more value to people dependent on welfare. It should also be noted that the detail of how the smooth earnings benchmark is calculated has been set out in the roadmap for social inclusion, and the data used in the calculation is also available on the CSO website. The rate, calculated by the Department using the smoothed earnings method, indicated that an increase of €20 in the weekly payment rate would be required to maintain the relative value of the State pension. As I also said in my initial contribution, the ultimate value of what people got from the measures in the budget superseded that amount.

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