Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

457. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the cost in 2017 of increasing the Back to School Allowance by €50 per child. [27521/16]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The back to school clothing and footwear allowance (BSCFA) scheme provides a once-off payment to eligible families to assist with the extra costs when children start school each autumn. The Government has provided €38.8 million for this scheme in 2016.

End of year records show that under the 2015 BSCFA scheme, payments were made to over 153,000 families in respect of some 281,000 children. The rate of payment was €100 in respect of children aged 4 to 11 and €200 for children over 12 years in second level education.

Using the number of children covered by the scheme in 2015 as a basis, the additional cost to increase the BSCFA payment by €50 in 2017 for each eligible child would be approximately €14 million. Changes to increase the rate of payment to any scheme administered by my Department would have to be considered in a budgetary context.