Social Welfare Payments
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-24
============================================================

Eoin Hayes (SD), Dublin Bay South

I accept that. I appreciate anything the Minister and his officials do in that regard. It is important to acknowledge that consistent child poverty is at 8%, so it is double what it was before. When we take housing into account, it is about 10%. It is about 26.6% for families whose youngest child is between the ages of zero and five. Working families really do need this kind of support.
Child poverty is something that comes up in the context of the budget every year. Last year, the Taoiseach said he wanted a second tier of child benefit. The Minister said he wanted a second tier of child benefit; he did not deliver it. This year, the Minister said he would like to deliver a second tier of child benefit but he cannot deliver it in this budget. It would, therefore, be helpful to know what he thinks about reforming the working family payment and this question of second tier of child benefit. What is the plan over the course of the Government? Will the Minister introduce it over the coming years? Why not this year? Importantly, I spoke to a paediatrician recently. I was expecting her to talk about healthcare or the HSE. The thing she focused on was child poverty and this question of a second tier of child benefit. I would be really interested to know how the Minister is actually going to tackle this problem, including the housing costs that are plunging people into poverty.

---

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/2026-09-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:50+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-24