Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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12. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the way that her Department will ensure that social welfare payment rates are adequate and that the social protection system protects persons from poverty considering the announcement of a €12 increase to the weekly core payment rates in budget 2023; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [50411/22]

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I refer to the €12 increases, which will kick in in January for all social welfare rates across the board and in light of that its inadequacy, based on the minimum essential standard of living that I have raised with the Minister many times.

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy knows, I announced on budget day that the Government will spend over €2.1 billion on social protection measures, including over €880 million in order to provide for a €12 increase in the weekly rate of social welfare payments from January 2023. This supports both pensioners and those of working age and includes a proportionate increase for qualified adults. This is the largest social welfare package in the history of the State.

The rate increase is accompanied by a wide range of additional measures and lump sum payments this year to social welfare customers. Taken together, for many household types, the combination effectively matches or exceeds inflation.

For example, a pensioner living alone will receive more than €1,600 in additional payments and energy credits in the next 12 months compared with the 12 months that have just passed. That is equivalent to an increase of approximately €31 per week. To take another example, a person with a disability living alone will benefit by approximately €1,850, an increase of approximately 14%, which is worth €36 per week. In general, most welfare recipients, taking into account the one-off measures, energy credits and underlying rate increase, will be better off by approximately 10% in the next 12 months compared with the 12 months just passed. Year on year, they are better off by 10%.

Combining one-off measures with underlying rate increases is a prudent targeted approach. In its post-budget analysis, the ESRI stated that welfare increases in 2022 and 2023, together with one-off measures, are large enough to leave the lowest-income households better off, on average, than they would have been had welfare payments risen in line with inflation this year and next. I am satisfied that the total social welfare budget package for 2023 has been designed to protect the most vulnerable in society. As we have done to date, the Government will continue to monitor the situation closely and will respond again when necessary.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I wish we could see a commitment from the Government to get to the minimum essential standard of living, MESL, rather than the haggling we heard just before the budget over whether it might be €10 or €15 or might fall in the middle. We need and should be moving towards providing certainty to social welfare recipients to go to the MESL.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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We will leave the last word to the Minister.

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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One of the benefits of the Vincentian MESL Research Centre is that it provides an analysis of the different levels of income needed for a wide range of household types, including the different costs. For example, the latest MESL annual update shows the differences in the cost of meeting household needs in urban and rural areas. For a start, differentiating social welfare payment rates based on location would be problematic. For these reasons, while not used for benchmarking, the work of the Vincentian MESL Research Centre at the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and previously the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice, has been and will continue to be a valuable input into the policy-making process. We have taken on board a good number of its recommendations.