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

Dara Calleary (FF), Mayo

As I said, we work hard to keep core social welfare rates ahead of inflation. We cannot just identify them in the context of not looking at the other supports that are available. On fuel allowance, we have increased the rate and the eligibility and, this year, we increased the season by an extra four weeks. That is an additional €1,100 of income for those 410,000 people who qualify, and that is on top of their weekly rate. I have referred to a range of other supports across the morning’s session in this regard. We are investing €28.9 billion in our social protection system in 2026. There were increases in all of the core weekly rates, in addition to the support payments that are paid.
This budget will be very much focused on how we can target exactly those people discussed by the Deputy, those who are subject to high inflation in the context of fuel, food, children and supports. However, we cannot just look at the weekly rates. We have to look at the other range of supports that we fund, even within our own Department in the context of school meals. In other Departments, there is the example of the free school books scheme. Where the costs are, we have tried to make interventions to assist people.

---

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