Social Welfare and Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System (Amendment) Bill 2025: Second Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-10
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Dara Calleary (FF), Mayo

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach, le Ceannaire an tSeanaid agus leis na Seanadóirí as suí chomh déanach seo le haghaidh an Bhille thábhachtaigh seo. Ar dtús, I congratulate the new Clerk of the Seanad, Martin Hughes, who is a fellow Ballina and Mayo man. I always knew Seanad Éireann had good taste and it will be in very good hands for the running of the House. I thank the Senators for accommodating the time slot for the Bill. It is a great honour for me to present my first social welfare Bill of five to Seanad Éireann.
The main purpose of the Bill is to implement budget 2026 measures. These will see €28.9 billion spent on social welfare in 2026, including over €1.15 billion in new measures targeted to assist households most in need of support. These measures include significant targeted improvements in the child support payment and the carer's allowance scheme. In this regard, the Government is implementing the largest child support payment increase in the history of the State. The measures announced in budget 2026 will bring the total annual value of the child support payment to just over €3,000 for each child under 12 and just over €4,000 for each child aged 12 and over. This is a significant level of targeted support aimed at reducing child poverty.
Looking at carer’s allowance, I am delighted that I managed to secure an increase in the weekly income disregard for a single person to €1,000 per week and for a couple to €2,000 per week. This means that a single carer who does some part-time work can have an income of just over €54,000 per year from that work and still receive a full carer's payment, or that a person who is caring in a couple household with income of up to €108,000 a year will receive a full carer’s payment.
Above inflation increases to core weekly rates of payment are also included in the Bill as well as a range of other measures that focus on those who need additional support. A number of other significant measures were announced on budget day that do not require primary legislation and are, therefore, not included in the Bill. These include improvements to the fuel allowance and the wage subsidy scheme. I am also happy to note that the Christmas bonus payments, which provide such vital financial support, issued last week to around 1.5 million long-term recipients of social welfare payments.
There are 18 sections in the Bill, which I will go through now for the House. Section 1 provides definitions of other Acts referred to in the Bill.
Section 2 provides that employers with employees on the national minimum wage will continue to attract the lower rate of employer PRSI, following the increase in the national minimum wage. The section will come into operation on the same day as the national minimum wage increase on 1 January 2026. That represents a weekly saving of €12.41 in employer PRSI for each full-time employee on the minimum wage.
Sections 3 to 6, inclusive, provide for a €10 increase in the weekly rate of maternity benefit, adoptive benefit, paternity benefit and parent's benefit, respectively, to €299 from January.
Section 7 gives effect to proportionate increases in the graduated rates of jobseeker's benefit and jobseeker's benefit for the self-employed.
Section 8 is an administrative amendment to provisions for the newborn baby grant. This is a once-off €280 payment for newborn or adopted children given in addition to the first month of a child benefit payment. This section extends the period of time that a person may qualify for the payment from one month to three months.
Section 9 provides for a €60 increase in the weekly income thresholds of working family payment for all family sizes.
Section 10 extends the back to work family dividend to recipients of the blind pension and disability allowance. Section 11 is a technical amendment to section 265 of the principal Act, correcting the subsection numbering.
Section 12 and Schedule 1 provide for increases in the rates of social insurance payments. I am pleased that there will be a €10 per week increase in the maximum personal rate of the PRSI-based benefits set out in Schedule 1.
Section 13 and Schedule 2 similarly provide for a €10 per week increase in social assistance payments set out in the schedule, which are subject to a means test. I also highlight that sections 12 and 13 provide for the largest-ever increases in the child support payment, as well as proportional increases for qualified adults.
The rate for children under 12 will increase by €8 to €58 per week, and the rate for children aged 12 and over will increase by €16 to €78 per week.
Section 14 provides for an increase in the rate of payment for domiciliary care allowance from €360 to €380 a month.
Section 15 is a purely technical amendment. It corrects a reference to a section in the Taxes Consolidation Act arising from an amendment in the Finance Act.
Section 16 is consequential to the enactment of auto-enrolment legislation. It provides that a participant’s contributions to My Future Fund will be assessed in the same manner as other retirement savings contributions by employees when assessing income for certain social welfare schemes. The schemes in question are the working family payment and rent supplement. Other payments impacted in a similar way do not require amendments to primary legislation. I will be making regulations to address these payments in the near future.
That concludes the social welfare element of the Bill. I will now turn my attention to a number of technical amendments to the Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Act 2024 that are contained in section 17 of the Bill. Before I go into the detail of these amendments, I want to assure Senators that we are well on course to have all the necessary legislative and operational systems in place for the successful launch of My Future Fund on 1 January 2026. The employer portal opened on 1 December and, as of 5 p.m. today, over 35,000 employers have registered, with 408,000 associated employees.
With My Future Fund, I am proud to be introducing a quality-assured supplementary retirement savings scheme that will address the relatively low proportion of private sector employees in Ireland with supplementary pension cover and to address pension adequacy more broadly. I wish to take the House through each of the amendments. These amendments have no material impact on the provisions of the Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Act or the policy intent that underlines them.
The first two amendments provide for a change in the implementation timeline to January 2026. Paragraph (a) restores the original policy intent to provide six months from the establishment date of the National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority, or NAERSA for ease of reference, for the development of the statement of strategy. Similarly, paragraph (b) provides for the reporting period for the Pensions Authority’s first supervisory report to cover the period from 14 October 2025 to 31 December 2026.
Paragraph (c) gives NAERSA a provision for operational flexibility in assigning an automatic enrolment date using Revenue payroll data. The provision is limited, giving flexibility of no more than 31 days. The amendment is necessary, in particular at calendar year-end periods, when some employers bring January payroll runs forward to mid-December. Staying with paragraph (c), the automatic enrolment legislation further requires that an employer must notify their employee that they have been enrolled. However, it currently does not specify a time period for this notice to be provided. This amendment sets out a requirement to provide notice to the employee within 14 days from the receipt of the determination of enrolment given to the employer. Paragraph (d) mirrors this amendment for employees who opt in to My Future Fund.
Paragraph (e) amends the requirement that all subcontractors of investment management providers be a regulated financial services provider. In practice, investment management providers, like all other businesses, use subcontractors to provide a wide range of services, including, for example, IT and facilities. The proposed change retains the position that the investment management provider itself shall be a regulated financial services provider within the meaning of the Central Bank of Ireland Acts. As a safeguard, it also provides that NAERSA may, at its discretion, require that some selected subcontractors likewise be regulated.
Looking at the final amendment to the automatic enrolment legislation, the current Act provides for offences relating to hindering an employee from participating in My Future Fund, and offences relating to the non-payment of contributions, to be dealt with through a fixed payment notice procedure. The amendments in paragraphs (f) and (g) extend this to include any contravention of the provisions that obligate an employer to provide a notice to an employee of their enrolment into My Future Fund. These amendments reflect that low-level regulatory breaches are best suited to being dealt with under the fixed payment notice procedure.
That concludes the amendments in the Bill relating to the Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Act. Finally, section 18 is the Short Title and construction of the Act. Once again, I thank Senators for their time. I commend the Bill to the House.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-10