Budget 2027
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-24
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Dara Calleary (FF), Mayo

The Deputy is very experienced. He knows there is a programme for Government. I hope to be in office for five years, and I will deliver on the commitment. It has to be done on a phased basis. I would love to do it overnight. If did that, however, the Deputy would be criticising me for not doing other things in the Department. We have had record increases. I genuinely think that any payment in respect of which you can have an income of €110,000 and retain the full allowance gives a sense of the direction of travel. In July, the income disregard was increased by 60% for a single person and for a couple. That gives a sense of my determination to drive this through. In addition, the vast majority of existing carers who are receiving a payment are on the maximum rate, which means that we have increased their income as well. I assure the Deputy that we are engaging and working on this in the context of our budget negotiations. We will invest €2.2 billion in supporting carers this year. I very much value their work and the work done on their behalf by Family Carers Ireland, Care Alliance Ireland and, especially, as we said earlier, the young carers' groups. That work is very important.

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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