Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)
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214. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the estimated cost to the Exchequer of increasing the weekly income disregards of the carer's allowance to €500, €625 and €700 per single person; and the estimated cost to the Exchequer of increasing the weekly income disregards of the carer's allowance to €1,000, €1,250 and €1,400 for a couple. [37180/24]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Income disregards ensure that, where people are in receipt of a social assistance payment and are working, their income from work to the level of the income disregard, is not assessed in the means test.

As part of Budget 2024, I further increased the Carer's Allowance disregard to €450 for a single person, and €900 for carers with a spouse/partner from June.

A detailed costing was undertaken previously and estimated the full year cost to increase the income disregard for Carer's Allowance to €625 for a single person and €1,250 per couple is €23.6 million.

The Department does not currently have the available data and modelling capacity to provide a detailed estimate for the full year cost of increasing the disregards to €500 and €750 for single people and €1,000 and €1,400 for couples, but a very high level estimate would be that the increase would cost in the region of €9 million and €35 million respectively in a full year.