Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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160. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the status of the examination of benchmarking of working age social welfare payments, as outlined in the Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025; when the examination will be concluded; if it is intended to publish the conclusions; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17813/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025 includes a commitment for the Department of Social Protection to "Consider and prepare a report for Government on the potential application of the benchmarking approach to other welfare payments".

In response to the recommendations from the Commission on Pensions, a series of reforms to the State Pension system were announced in September 2022. As part of this, it was decided that a smoothed earnings method to calculating a benchmarked/indexed rate of State Pension payments would be introduced as an input to the annual budget process from 2023.

Following on from this, a report on benchmarking and indexing working age social protection rates has been drafted by my Department and is currently being considered.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.