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

Seamus Healy (IND), Tipperary South

As the Minister knows, caring is a very onerous responsibility. It is often a 24-7, 365-day-a-year operation. Surveys by carers have shown that 75% of carers receive no respite whatsoever and the grant itself has been eaten up by inflation not to mention the cost of living over the past number of years. If we look at the past number of years from 2021, we can see that there has only been one year of an increase in the carer's support grant and that was €150 in 2025 and was, of course, in advance of the general election in November 2024. There was no increase in the grant in 2026. Family Carers Ireland is looking for an increase of €150, which is a very modest increase that, in fact, does not keep up with inflation and does not take into account the cost of living. It is a very modest request and I ask the Minister to include it in the budget.

---

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