Social Welfare and Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System (Amendment) Bill 2025: Second Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-10
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Nessa Cosgrove (LAB), Labour Panel

The Bill follows a budget that underlines the Government's failure to deliver real and radical policy in the social welfare system that would be fair to all and make everyone's life better. Sometimes I think we are living in an alternative universe. Senator O'Donovan listed the benefits available. At the same time, the budget left disabled people significantly worse off. People with disabilities will be €1,400 worse off next year. Social welfare payments keep them just above the poverty line.
Rather than wasting €700 million on an untargeted VAT rate cut for the hospitality sector, the Government could instead have introduced a cost of disability payment starting at €25 per week and abolish the carer's allowance, something we committed to in Labour's alternative budget. There is a paltry increase in core social welfare payments for many people on fixed incomes such as pensioners. An increase was recommended by the ESRI, which stated at least €16 per week was needed to keep up with the cost of living. We know pensioners are choosing between food or fuel this winter. A targeted second tier of child benefit payment, which would have reduced child poverty by a quarter and cut the child poverty gap in half, should have been a priority for the budget.
It is a shocking failure of our society that child poverty figures are rising relentlessly. The number of children living in consistent property nearly doubled in 2024 to 8.5%. Some 104,780, or one in five, children live in families below the poverty line when housing costs are factored in. I could go on. There are shortfalls in maternity payments, parental leave, access to the working family payment for single parents and the full jobseeker's rate for young people.
I want to welcome the auto enrolment system. It is very much needed. There are some logistical implications for the auto enrolment scheme in the early years and childcare sectors and the voluntary sector. I worked in the sector for a long time. Organisations have asked me to raise this issue. How will the voluntary sector and small independent providers be funded for their contributions towards the auto enrolment scheme? If the State is to cover the cost, will this be the total cost of all employees or only those employed on statutory ratios and through the core funding model? Some people do not opt into that model.
Early years services and voluntary and community services sector organisations may currently fund from their own or other resources additional staff, such as level 7 staff in the early years sector, beyond legal requirements in order to reduce the ratios and provide auxiliary services. The staff will not necessarily appear on the core funding applications or be accounted for in allocations made to organisations through core funding. Have the implications of this been clarified? I ask for clarification. Some services have opted not to go into the core funding model. Will such organisations have their pension contributions fully funded? I look forward to the response from the Minister.

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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