Social Welfare Payments
Dail Éireann — 2025-11-27
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Louise O'Reilly (SF), Dublin Fingal West

I agree with my party colleague that given the Minister of State's position as a representative of a Border county, she will be more familiar with this issue than some in the House. Not that one would guess it from listening to me, but I also grew up in a Border town and I know that people who live along the Border do not recognise it in the same way as those who live elsewhere because they go back and forth across the Border all of the time.
In response to a parliamentary question, I was told that there are only three people resident in the North who are in receipt of carer's benefit at this point. We are not talking about massive numbers here. There are no floodgates opening or anything like that coming down the line. This is also about the fact that the people taking on caring responsibilities are saving the State an absolute fortune. This woman is caring for her mother and then going home to where she lives, which is only up the road.
I am interested in hearing what the Department is prepared to do about this. In our view, it is amenable to resolution by statutory instrument. I ask the Minister of State to request this of the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Calleary, who is aware of this issue. As I understand it, there is no hostility towards resolving it; the question is whether we can. As it stands, people who have worked all of their lives and paid stamps are now falling foul of the habitual residency rule. It is very simple. For the purposes of habitual residency, the island should be regarded as one. I am not trying to make a massively political point but it would make sense to regard the island as one.
However, there is also a need to resolve these individual cases as well as getting the resolution for us into the future.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-11-27/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:23+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-11-27