Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-06
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

-----on those services. If you keep spending billions now, you will not have the money for education, special education, childcare reductions and health services. You will not have the funding for all of that at the next budget or, indeed, for next year.
On what we have done so far, we extended and increased the fuel allowance and we expanded it in terms of the number of people it covers, particularly those on the working family payment. The minimum wage has increased significantly. We have deferred the carbon tax increases and we have a variety of packages for a range of sectors. Our social welfare payments went up €10 in the last budget. It has come under huge pressure since then, and I acknowledge that. We also put in record increases to child income support payments - the highest on record. That was a really significant and targeted message. The way the Deputy wants it is that she wants not to do that. She wants us to move away from that sort of targeting approach.
Then, in the context of the October budget, we will have available to us other mechanisms like tax and other measures that we can introduce that can benefit people to get them over the winter period, which is going to be a crucial period for all.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-06/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:54+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-06