Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Most welfare benefits require the recipient to be habitually resident in Ireland. Certain welfare benefits, such as State Pension Contributory allow the recipient to live outside the State.

The data requested by the Deputy for the calendar year 2023 is shown in the attached tabular statement. There were approximately 3,500 recipients of increased qualified adult payments living abroad, and 82,000 payments were made.

Note that only a person's current country of residence is available in my Department's records. Due to this limitation, the table below is a record of all adult dependent allowances paid in the calendar year 2023 to recipients who were resident outside Ireland in March 2024. As such, it does not include payments made to people who moved to Ireland in 2023, while it includes payments made to people who lived in Ireland at the start of 2023 before moving away.

This means that the expenditure figures shown in the table are statistical estimates rather than exact figures.

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Recipients of certain social welfare payments can claim an increase in their payment in respect of a qualified adult, subject to a means assessment. A qualified adult is the spouse, civil partner or cohabitant of the recipient who is being wholly or mainly maintained by that claimant.

The information requested is not readily available, and may also not be available for all schemes. My Department is in the process of collating the data in question which is available and will revert with a reply to the Deputy in due course.