Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Primary weekly social welfare payments are intended to enable recipients to meet their basic day-to-day income needs. Each primary payment has specific eligibility criteria, which may include residence in Ireland.

In addition to these primary payments, the Department also provides a range of other payments, on a weekly, monthly, or less frequent basis. These payments are considered secondary in nature and cannot be made available to those who are not in receipt of a primary payment.

The Living Alone Increase (LAI) is one of those secondary payments. It is not a scheme or a stand-alone payment, but it is a supplement to a primary social protection payment of €22 per week made to people in receipt of certain social welfare payments and who are living alone.

Qualifying payments for the LAI include State Pension (Contributory), State Pension (Non-contributory), Widow’s, Widower’s, or Surviving Civil Partner’s (Contributory) Pension, Widow's/Widower's Pension under the Occupational Injuries Benefit Scheme, Incapacity Supplement under the Occupational Injuries Benefit Scheme, Invalidity Pension, Disability Allowance, Blind Pension and Deserted Wife's Benefit.

The LAI can be paid to someone who is not resident in Ireland if they are in receipt of a primary payment which does not require the recipient to be resident in Ireland, provided they continue to meet the other criteria. Of the LAI qualifying payments, State Pension (Contributory), Widow’s, Widower’s, or Surviving Civil Partner’s (Contributory) Pension and Invalidity Pension do not require a person to be resident in the Republic of Ireland.

The number of people in receipt of the LAI will vary over time as individual circumstances change. The Department’s records as of the 31st of March 2024 show that there are 172,584 Living Alone Increases in payment. Of these, 6,228 were being paid to those with a registered address outside the Republic of Ireland. The number of recipients per country is listed in the below table. Each person would be receiving €22 on a weekly basis in addition to their primary payment. For 6,228 payments this would equate to an approximate cost of €137,000 on a weekly basis.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Persons entitled to receive their social welfare benefit abroad are also entitled to cost of living lump sum payments to help with the cost of living. This includes, for example, recipients of State Pension Contributory, Widow's, Widower's or Surviving Civil Partner's (Contributory) Pension or Invalidity Pension.

In 2023 there were approximately 63,000 recipients receiving 91,000 cost of living allowance payments (Budget 2024).

The data requested by country by the Deputy is shown in the below table. Note that all figures are preliminary estimated from individual payments excluding arrears.

Note that only a person's current country of residence is readily available in my Department's records. Due to this limitation, the table below is a record of all cost of living payments paid in the calendar year 2023 to people 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 in 2023 before moving away.