Grant Payments
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-29
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Maeve O'Connell (FG), Dublin Rathdown

I acknowledge the improvements that have been made to the various schemes. The overall scheme does not take into account how the world in which we are operating has changed. We are now in a world where people are expected to engage in lifelong learning. People return to education, then go back to work and then return to education. We need to demonstrate our support for that. As we know, we are also facing a housing crisis. As part of that, we are changing the rules to allow modular homes to be built on the site of the family home. We will now see in Dublin the situation that pertains in the country where people share an eircode with their family while living completely separate from them, resulting in all of the income being rolled in together. The system as originally designed is not fit for purpose in the modern era. It needs to be looked at. We need to ensure that people can access these supports because we need to have people consistently upskilling and reskilling in order to contribute to society and improve their own outcomes. Of course, we need to ensure the system is not taken advantage of but we need to provide those supports for people to encourage that lifelong learning.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-29