Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance)
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50. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if he will restore social protection payments to pre-austerity levels adjusted for inflation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18804/16]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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My Department’s allocation for 2016, at over €19.625 billion, is almost €1.9 billion higher or 10.4% than expenditure in 2008. The cost of increasing all working age weekly payments to their 2009 equivalent rates is of the order of €0.9 billion.

After a series of challenging years, improvements for people in receipt of social welfare payments began in Budget 2015 and continued in Budget 2016. This included increases in the weekly rates of payment for pensioners and in the living alone allowance. In addition, new initiatives aimed at helping families were introduced, such as the back to work family dividend, and a paternity benefit scheme which will commence payment later this year.

Looking ahead, the new Programme for a Partnership Government contains a number of significant commitments to enhance the welfare system in the years ahead. This includes increasing rent supplement limits as well as above-inflation increases for pensioners and in the living alone allowance. The Programme also supports rate increases for people with disabilities and carers. I was pleased to announce on Tuesday a range of increased limits for the Rent Supplement Scheme and these come into effect tomorrow, 1^stJuly, 2016.

I also plan to extend social insurance benefits for the self-employed and to improve the treatment benefit scheme.

I want to make progress on these commitments in the forthcoming Budget and will seek to do this within the additional resources which will be available. I also look forward to engagement and input from my colleagues in the Oireachtas in the matter.

In addition, I will be holding a Pre-Budget forum on July 22 next to which I have invited forty welfare representative organisations. I will listen carefully to the views of the organisations attending.