My Department delivers a range of supports to help people in receipt of a jobseekers payment to secure and sustain full-time employment. The Intreo employment service works with jobseekers on an individualised basis to identify skills, work experience and work preferences with a view to matching people to suitable job opportunities and to address skills gaps or training needs by referring jobseekers to suitable education and training opportunities or to employment schemes like the work placement experience programm…

The Deputy mentioned the case of people who want to do home help work for two or three hours per morning five days per week as opposed to working for three full days. This issue has been raised with me by these organisations as well. The aim is to get people into full-time work, not to subsidise employers because that could have unintended consequences. There are more people working than ever before and the Deputy acknowledged that. Unemployment has never been lower and we continue to look at all of the different s…

I have considered this issue but I do not want to be in the position where we are subsidising employers to give people fewer hours either. I want to be conscious of that and we have looked at many different ways to incentivise people to get back to full-time work because that is where we want them. I know this is an issue and it is certainly something we have looked at. I will look at it again but it applies to women in particular who want to do a few hours of work in the mornings before the children come home from…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 11 and 50 together. Since my appointment as Minister, I have made significant improvements to the means test for carer's allowance. I have taken a range of actions to improve supports for carers over recent years through increasing payment rates and income disregards and providing once-off and extra double payments. It is important to acknowledge that there are a range of other supports for carers provided by the Department of Social Protection which are not based on a means assessm…

Yes, absolutely.

I thank the Deputy. I recognise and value the work of our carers. I mean that. We all know carers who are doing wonderful work. My Department will spend more than €1.7 billion this year on our support payments to carers. If you look at my record, improving supports for our carers has been a key priority for me as Minister for Social Protection. I might also say that I was delighted to introduce the new scheme to provide pension contributions to long-term carers from the start of January. There has been a strong int…

The Government and I personally value the work that carers do. As I said, this year alone €1.7 billion will be spent on supporting our carers. We have done a lot, including through lump sum payments for carers, pensions for carers and major changes to the means test. Weekly payments have been increased by €29 over the past three years. I assure the Deputy that supporting our carers will be a key priority for me in next week’s budget.

This Government acknowledges the important role that family carers play and is fully committed to supporting them in that role. Accordingly, the State pension system gives significant recognition to those whose work history includes extended periods outside of paid employment, often to raise families or in a full-time caring role. Despite these measures, some long-term carers of incapacitated dependants faced barriers in accessing the State pension - contributory. Based on a programme for Government commitment, the…

I thank the Deputy. I take the point he makes that if a person takes on a caring role later in life, he or she will not have spent 20 years caring. We introduced this in January this year. Like all of these schemes, it has to bed in. I followed the recommendations of the Pensions Commission. As I said, it carried out a lot of consultation. I am always happy to look at these things. Our intention is to help people who genuinely had to give up work and cannot go back to work because of their caring responsibilities. …

The Deputy outlined a specific case where someone had retired and was going to look after his wife. There are situations where a person with fewer than 20 years of caring may be entitled to avail of home caring periods or the homemaker scheme, subject to existing qualification conditions. I do not think the person in the case the Deputy mentioned would qualify under that scheme. This scheme has only been in place since January this year. Like all schemes in my Department, we will review it and determine whether we …

I can take Questions Nos. 17, 18, 19 and 20.

That is what I have now, but I might take more. There could be more to come.

I do not mind; we can go back if you wish.

I thank the Deputy. Under the law, as currently enacted, entitlement to a widow's, widower's or surviving civil partner’s contributory pension is only available to a surviving partner who was party to a marriage or civil partnership. On 22 January, the Supreme Court delivered its judgment on the entitlement of an unmarried cohabitant to a widow's, widower's or surviving civil partner’s contributory pension. The Supreme Court judgment overruled a previous High Court decision and found in favour of the claimant and h…

I thank the Deputy. He has asked me a lot of questions and I will have to come back with some of the answers because this is quite technical. My officials are doing a lot of work to cover some of the particular issues the Deputy has raised. This is complex enough, and we want to make sure we get it right. The Deputy said there are about 150,000 cohabiting couples. I asked my officials how many people they think will be entitled to the payment and they advised me that it is very difficult to predict the number of pe…

I will bring forward the proposed legislation as soon as I possibly can. Under the draft legislation, it is proposed that a person who becomes eligible for the scheme will be able to claim irrespective of the date of the death of their partner. It is also proposed that claims will be backdated to the date of the judgment of January 2024 when the existing law was found to be inconsistent with the Constitution, where the date of death preceded that date. The Deputy asked a few other questions. I just do not have the …

Child benefit is a monthly payment made to families with children up to the age of 16 years. The payment continues to be paid in respect of children until their 19th birthday where they are in full-time education or have a disability. The extension of child benefit to 18-year-olds was one of my key priorities in budget 2024 and I am very pleased that we were able to bring that change in from May this year. Child benefit is paid at €140 per month. Twins are paid at one and a half times the standard monthly rate for …

I thank Deputy Moynihan and acknowledge the support he and others gave me in increasing the age to the 19th birthday. That made a big difference. It brought a lot of children in, including some who were still in secondary school and were able to get that support. It is a much-needed support. It is a universal payment. Some people say it should be universal, while others say there should be targeted measures. All I can say is that in all my days working, the children's allowance, which is now called child benefit, h…

The Deputy is correct that there is a cohort in the middle that does not have any other supports and the child benefit payment is important. Some people have said to me that people with high incomes get the same payment, but I have met a lot more people in the middle income bracket than millionaires over the years. It is an important payment. It is €140 with a double payment last year. That equates to slightly more than a €10 per month increase. These things have to be looked at in the context of the budget. I know…

I published the Green Paper on Disability Reform in September last year. The Green Paper sought to reform my Department's system of disability payments to better target supports and better account for the cost of disability. The Green Paper was a consultation document. Feedback from the public consultation raised concerns about its proposals. In particular, people questioned whether it was appropriate to reform the system of disability payments and employment supports separate from a wider consultation on other cha…