Social Welfare Payments
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-24
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Eoin Hayes (SD), Dublin Bay South

I thank the Minister for his reply. On Committee Stage, the assistant secretary general shared the information that, as the Minister said, there would be 56,000 recipients in 2026. However, the Department estimates a 53% uptake among those who are eligible, which means that approximately 50,000 people who would get that payment were they to apply for it are not getting it. That is a big problem. What comes to mind for me is the fact that the Government was able to work with Revenue to identify all recipients of carer's allowance and target them in quite a negative way in terms of tax bands.
It seems the Minister is not doing the positive side of that story, which is working with other agencies to target the families who need support, reach out to them, send the community welfare officers out, send officials from the Department out or whatever it is. For some reason, the Minister is not focusing on these neediest families. I ask him to consider how he can work to identify these families and reach out to them proactively rather than relying solely on an application process.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:50+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-24