Éamon Ó Cuív challenges €200 payment for qualified adult dependents
Éamon Ó Cuív criticised the decision that qualified adult dependents received only a €200 spring cost-of-living bonus rather than €400, calling the outcome unfair to pensioners. He argued the exclusion was an oversight and urged an amendment so dependent adults receive the same payment as two-adult households.
Complaint about qualified adult payments
Ó Cuív focused on pensioners and argued that when a household includes an adult dependent on a social welfare payment, that dependent was paid only €200 rather than €400. He said this creates discrimination against people who, in good faith, opted to receive pension entitlements as a qualified adult dependent.
Pension assessment options and fairness
He outlined four ways entitlement to a pension can be assessed - non-contributory pension, two contributory pension methods, and the dependent adult (means-tested) route - and said pensioners are advised to choose the option best for them. Ó Cuív emphasised that nobody anticipated a subsequent difference in eligibility for the lump-sum cost-of-living payment based on that choice.
Numbers and cost estimate
Ó Cuív gave figures from the rolls: 2,983 qualified adult dependents on the non-contributory pension and 54,510 on the contributory pension. He estimated that extending the full payment would cost about €11 million, describing that as a small sum in the context of wider supports and noting it represents roughly 10% of contributory pensioners with a qualified adult and 3% of non-contributory pensioners.
Proposed administrative fix
He told the minister he believed the omission was an oversight and argued it could be corrected by amending the statutory instrument so that qualified adult dependents receive €400 where a household has two adults dependent on a payment.
Government reply and wider supports cited
The Government response set out that the spring cost-of-living bonus is a one-off €200 lump sum paid to eligible primary recipients and that qualified adults do not have an entitlement to cost-of-living bonuses in their own right. Officials said the €200 payment was made in the week commencing 24 April to about 1.2 million people at an approximate cost of €250 million and summarised additional supports in the 2023 package - including child payments, extensions to hot school meals and multiple lump-sum and weekly increases across social protection totalling over €470 million.
We publish thousands of recordings to make Irish politics transparent and resistant to manipulation. Spotted an error? Report it — together we are building a reliable archive of Irish politics.
Good morning, good morning and good morning and good morning and good morning and good morning and good morning and good morning and good morning and good morning and good morning and good morning and good morning. I've been involved with the 10º to the Chicago city of Portugal, I got a good night. As you know, government made a good decision recently to pay a payment of €200 to each person in receipt. of a long-term primary payment. In my view, a mistake was made. In the case of an adult dependent being on the payment, only €200 was paid, not €400. I think we should outline and I will focus on pensioners. We should outline why this is unfair. First of all, two people have two costs. If we take pensioners, as you will be well aware in your constituency work, a pensioner comes in to you, or somebody going on the pension, and you assess what is the best option for them. For many women, particularly more women than men, because they tend to have traditionally taken more time out for caring, etc., they have gap year contribution records. But for man or woman, there are four ways of assessing what is the best option for a recipient of a pension. In sum, where you have couples, the best option is both to get a full contributory pension. That is by far the best option. However, if they do not have a full contribution, four options come into play. For a person without a good record, option number one is the non-contributory pension. Option number two is two ways under the contributory pension. The total contribution system and the average system. And the fourth way is to look at the option of a dependent adult, which is means tested. You would always advise them to do whichever is better, but nobody ever foresaw that there would be then discrimination between your choice and that in the event of you choosing to go as a dependent adult, even though you had an underlying right to a pension in your own right, that you would be discriminated. I think this was just an oversight. I would like to point out that the costs would not be that great. There are on the non-contributory pension, 2,983 qualified adult dependents being paid, and on the contributory pension, that is 54,510. If you multiply that by 200, you get about 11 million, which out of the greater scheme of what this cost is very small. For example, it is 10 per cent, give or take, of the contributory pensioners who have a qualified adult. It is 3 per cent of the non-contributory pensioners. So, Minister, I am sure this was a mistake, it was an oversight. There is no significant cost factor involved here. And I am sure it would not be a big job to amend the statutory instrument to cover, in the event of somebody having opted in good faith for the dependent adult, that they would actually get 400, like everybody else got, who had two adults dependent on a payment for social welfare. The Government is acutely aware of the effect that high energy prices and the cost of living are having on families, businesses and the most vulnerable. In recognition of these pressures, only last September, Budget 2023 delivered the largest social protection budget in the history of the State. In addition to the substantial package of supports provided as part of the Budget earlier this year, the Government announced a €470 million spring package of measures to help social protection recipients, including families, pensioners, carers and people with disabilities. The spring cost of living bonus is one of the range of measures put in place. It is one lump sum payment of €200 for an eligible person who has an entitlement to a primary payment in their own right. The €200 lump sum payment was paid in the week commencing the 24th of April to cover 1.2 million people in receipt of long-term social welfare payments at a cost of approximately €250 million. If a person receives more than one qualifying social welfare payment, they will receive only one €200 lump sum payment. Each eligible primary recipient of a social welfare payment receives €200, regardless of the number of dependents, qualified adult or children, if any, or other social welfare payments. Qualified adults do not have an entitlement to cost of living bonuses, including the spring bonus in their own right. Further measures as passed as part of the latest cost of living support package will also include a €100 lump sum payment in respect of every child for whom child benefit is paid, an additional €100 payment will be paid in this year in respect of each child for whom the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance is also paid, and an extension of the hot school meals program to all DESH primary schools from September, benefiting 64,500 children. Together, these supports will provide over €470 million in additional supports to households and families in need. Since March of last year, this Government has provided unprecedented supports to protect people and families as the cost of living has increased. These supports have included a mixture of lump sum payments, double payment weeks, and weekly rate increases. The €2.2 billion social protection budget 2023 package included eight lump sum payments to a value of €1.3 billion, comprising of an autumn double payment, a double payment of child benefit, a €400 lump sum payment of fuel allowance, a €500 lump sum payment to families receiving working family payment, €500 lump sum payment in receipt with people for disability allowance, a €500 lump sum payment to carers, a Christmas double payment of weekly social welfare and pension payments. In addition from January, we have provided a €12 increase in social welfare and pension rates, the largest increase in weekly payments since the mid-2000s, a significant expansion of the fuel allowance scheme with a particular focus on supporting older people over 70, increased income thresholds for the working family payment so that more families can qualify. These measures are in addition to other measures introduced during 2022 and to assist people and families with the cost of living, including a major expansion of the Hot School Meals programme to 320 dash schools, a €100 increase in the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance, two fuel allowance lump sum payments of €125 in March 2022 and €100 in May 2022, a universal energy credit of €200 in April and a further reduction in student fees, 25 per cent reduction in childcare costs and 20 per cent reduction in transport fees. In relation to the figures that Deputy O'Cueve has quoted in relation to the qualification criteria for the State pension for people on qualifying allowances that may qualify anyway for part of the main payment, I will raise that with Minister Humphrey specifically and come back to you. Deputy O'Cueve I thank you kindly, because to be quite honest, whoever wrote this in the Department must think I know nothing about social welfare, because they informed me about all the schemes that you and I knew about and every TD in this House knows about, because we are dealing with them every week. So I think it is a little bit patronising for the Department to dodge the issue. Now, what did they actually say about the nub of this issue? They just made a bold statement. Qualified adults do not have entitlement to cost of living bonuses, including the spring bonus in their own right. Yes, Minister and no Minister, because as you know, what happened before Christmas was double payments. So if you had a qualified adult on your payment, you got paid. Now, the two points I am making here is, these are about cost of living. Are you telling me that, for example, pensioners or invalidity pensioners or any of the people, disability people or so on, that have a dependent adult did not face the same cost of living increases as everybody else? Of course they did. Is the Department saying that to me? Secondly, as I said to you in this case, some of these people might have had and probably had an underlying right to a payment in their own right, but they opted for the one because the Department carefully always tells us they will give you the one that is not optimal for you. And having opted for the dependent adult, they then find that in this case they lose out. Now, Minister, it is very, very simple. I am not asking you to waste your time here going through another supplementary answer with a whole lot of further bump. I am asking you, will you go back and ask the Minister to review this on two bases? One, because, as I said, people have made choices on the basis of the best option. Secondly, and more importantly, coupled in a household phase, the same increase in costs, irrespective of whether it is a primary payment on a dependent adult or two primary payments. So in terms of equity, and the third issue here is that there is very, very little cost to this. So if you just stand up and say, I will raise the transcript of this debate with the Minister, you can sit down and you can go on to the next technical issue, which will save my good colleagues here a bit of time here in the House. I am happy to undertake to do that on behalf of Deputy O'Ghreed. Thank you.
Thank you for downloading 🙏
If you publish this material on social media, we would be very grateful if you tagged VideoParliament. It helps us reach more people and keep building a transparent archive of Irish politics.
