Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Child Benefit is a monthly payment to the parents or guardians of children under 16 years of age. Child Benefit can also be claimed for children aged 16 and 17, if they are in full-time education or full-time training or have a disability and cannot support themselves.

A double payment for those in receipt of Child Benefit payments issued on 5^thof December 2023. The provision of this double payment plus the extension of Child Benefit to 18-year-olds in full-time education was one of my key priorities as part of Budget 2024.

650,000 families will receive the double Child Benefit payment in respect of over 1.2million children.

Please find attached, the number of families in each county that will receive the double child benefit payment on 5th of December 2023. The specific number of children, by county, who will be the beneficiaries of this payment is displayed below.

County Breakdown of Child Benefit Recipients:

I trust this helps clarify the position for the Deputy.

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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This week, my Department will issue a 100% Christmas Bonus to people on the same day as they usually receive their weekly primary payment.

Based on current recipient numbers of schemes, this payment will be made to 1,248,997 people. This figure is based on individual recipients. If a person is in receipt of more than one qualifying payment, they are only counted once in this figure. This figure is an estimate and may change as new applications are received and claims are closed.

The breakdown by county of this estimated number of people who will receive this Christmas Bonus is shown in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Estimated number of recipients of the Christmas Bonus, by county.