Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)

I remember when Fianna Fáil used to care about the social protection system. Can someone do a welfare check on Willie O’Dea? Where is here? He must be mortified, absolutely embarrassed. When the Society of St. Vincent de Paul said €16 were needed to be added to every core weekly payment, we agreed. We made allowance for that in our costed alternative budget. As for Fine Gael, we had the usual pre-budget whining, pitting one section of welfare recipient against another, all for the headlines - nasty, unbecoming, divisive stuff. It never comes to pass, it is just for the headlines, shoring up their base. The pathetic increase this year will see citizens who rely on social welfare payments fall back. The social welfare increases of €10 a week represents between a 3% and 4% increase, less than wage growth and certainly less than those who signed up to the pension promise would have delivered. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil signed up to that pension promise. They have a lot of picking up to do over the next few years to reach that and to make sure their promises to pensioners are kept. These are the working poor, the most exposed by the decision not to make any extra payments to cover the cost of living in 2026.

We did not hear from the Minister earlier about the household benefits package going up, for example. It has not gone up in 12 years. We would push it by €10 a week. The living alone allowance has not gone up in years. It should have gone up by at least a fiver to €27. We also believe child benefit should have gone up by €10. The core rates of child benefit have not gone up in a long, long time. We have had double payments in recent years but no permanent increases to the payment itself.

If we are targeting, let us decide, as Labour did years ago, thanks to our colleague, Deputy Mark Wall, who really got this matter on the national agenda, to go the whole way this year and allocate the €330 million needed to get rid of the means test for the carers’ allowance.

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