Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-01-28 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central ------in education, in health and in areas like respite and residential where we have to substantially increase provision. The way to do that is to allocate funding on a sustainable and permanent basis. The additional needs payments are there and that is what the Minister is referring to as well. They are there for people who are in difficulty in terms of heating and food. Those payments are there and 2,300 people availed of them last year. They are available to people who end up in difficulty for one reason or another. Our social protection programme is there to help people in those circumstances. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-28/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-28