Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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140. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the estimated cost to increase child benefit in respect of children over 12 years of age by €30. [25697/20]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Child benefit is a monthly payment made to families with children in respect of all qualified children up to the age of 16 years. The payment continues to be paid in respect of children until their 18th birthday who are in full-time education, or who have a disability. Child benefit is currently paid, as of end-August 2020, to over 638,244 families in respect of over 1.2 million children. The estimated expenditure on Child Benefit in 2019 is in excess of €2 billion.

According to the most recent data available from the Central Statistics Office, there were 391,233 children aged between 12-18 years in the state in 2019. The cost of a €30 weekly increase per child in this age cohort is estimated at €610.3 million per annum.

Increasing Child Benefit in this way is not considered a targeted measure and any change to Child Benefit involves significant cost implications, and therefore would have to be considered in an overall budgetary context.