Social Welfare Benefits Dail Éireann — 2022-02-03 ============================================================ Heather Humphreys (FG), Cavan-Monaghan I understand that old people living alone in particular have additional costs because they only have one income coming in. I accept that. That is why in the past two years since becoming Minister for Social Protection I have increased the living-alone allowance. I have always been of the opinion that it takes the same amount of fuel to heat a house for two people as it does for one person. It is something of which I am very conscious. As I stated, the Government will look at this issue. It is like everything else; there are always difficult choices, but we are certainly committed to examining what we can do. I am going to do what I can in my Department of Social Protection. --- 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/2022-02-03/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:50:05+00:00 Sitting date: 2022-02-03