Burton pledges to ‘examine’ water support for low-income families

Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton "will look" at any issue arising from low-income families not being entitled to the new water support payment.

Her department's principal officer, Denis Moynihan, confirmed at a press briefing yesterday that anyone unemployed for less than a year will not be entitled to the new €100-a-year payment intended to help with water charges. Meanwhile, wealthy pensioners aged 70 or over will be entitled to claim both the tax relief at the 20 per cent rate (up to €100 a year) and also the €100-a-year support through their household benefits package.

The water support payment is payable to households in receipt of the household benefits package, which is available to people aged 70 or over, or to some groups aged between 66 and 70, and those in receipt of the fuel allowance. Anyone unemployed for less than a year cannot claim this.

Of the 370,000 people currently unemployed, about 190,000 are short-term. Mr Moynihan said it would be impossible to quantify what proportion of these 190,000 were living in households where there was other income and what proportion were the only breadwinners or living alone.

Package figures

Some 415,000 households receive the household benefits package, while 250,000 get the fuel allowance. The water support payment follows these two benefits. “So there is a significant number of households covered in that,” said Ms Burton. “People who are on short-term social welfare payments tend to go back to work very quickly, so if there is an issue there, it’s something that we will examine. If somebody loses their job, the highest chance of getting a job is within the first six months of becoming unemployed, but if there is a problem there, we will look at it.”

She set out increases to a number of welfare payments, including a €5 monthly increase per child in child benefit, to €135; a €1.30-a-week increase in the living-alone allowance, to €9; a partial reintroduction of the Christmas bonus, at 25 per cent of the weekly payment; and a new back-to-work family dividend, which will allow unemployed parents returning to work to retain their weekly €28.90-a-child allowance for 12 months and half the rate for a second 12 months.

More child benefit increases

If the economy continued to grow, she said, child benefit would again go up by €5 in the 2016 budget. The basic rate has been cut by €36 since 2009.

The aim of the changes, she said, was to help people return to work, particularly families with children, to support all families with children, and to help low-income families on welfare to meet water charges.

“Throughout this crisis,” she said, “this Government protected core welfare rates and maintained a massively strong social welfare safety net. That was a political choice which this Government made very deliberately. It is not one that was followed in other bailout countries.”

The cost of these new measures would be €198 million next year, which could be afforded because of the falling numbers of unemployed claiming jobseeker’s benefit and allowance.