Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-29
============================================================

Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

We have increased the fuel allowance. We have substantial provision for pensioners in our social protection frameworks. We allocated an additional €2 billion. There is a sense in the House that we can literally allocate billions more to everybody. We do need some conversation around targeting. I think targeting is important for pensioners as well, which we have done and which we will do more of. In terms of child poverty as well, we targeted it in the budget and it gets ignored because people want universality left, right and centre. As Deputy Hayes knows, there was a €16 increase in the child support payment for children aged over 12, bringing it to €78. There is a danger in the House that we are going to lose the importance of targeting in the political debate about the cost of living.

---

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/2026-04-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-29