Minister Heather Humphreys – Budget 2023 Press Conference Speech

Good evening, everybody.

The cost of living is affecting the lives of families the length and breadth of this country.

The cost of heating your home has gone up and the weekly grocery shop has become a lot more expensive.

I know a lot of people are genuinely struggling to make ends meets at the moment.

As Social Protection Minister, my priority is to support those people and to support the most vulnerable in our society - our old people, our carers, people with disabilities and low income families.

That’s what Budget 2023 is all about.

The Social Protection measures I am announcing today is €2.2 Billion – aside from the extraordinary supports provided during the Pandemic – this is the largest Social Protection Budget Day Package in the history of the State.

September is coming to an end. The days are getting shorter, and I know many people are looking ahead nervously to the Winter months.

In order to ease the pressure and stress that many households are facing, I am bringing forward a series of exceptional lump sum payments to support people.

This will include:

A Cost of Living Double Payment in October to all social protection recipients including Pensioners, Carers & People with Disabilities.

A €400 lump sum payment to all households in receipt of fuel allowance to be paid in November.

A pensioner or a person with a disability who lives alone has the same costs of heating their home or turning on the lights but they only have one income coming into their home. For that reason, I am providing a €200 Lump Sum Payment to all persons in receipt of the Living Alone Allowance which will be paid in November.

A Double Payment of Child Benefit to all families in November. For families, this means where they would normally receive a payment of €140 per Child, they will now receive €280 per child. Every family in the country, which is 640,000 families in total, will benefit from this measure.

I want to support working families. There are a lot of families out there who are working hard every day to put bread on the table but who are on low incomes. I want to help them and so I am providing a €500 Lump Sum Payment to all families in receipt of the Working Family Payment.

I am a strong supporter of our Family Carers. Last year I made substantial changes to the Carers Means Test. As part of our Pension Reforms, I will be providing a Pension to Long Term Carers and today I am pleased to announce a special Lump Sum €500 Carer’s Support Grant to assist Carers with the Cost of Living.

I recognise the particular difficulties and additional cost of living pressures faced by people with disabilities. My Department is working on major reforms to Disability Payments on foot of the Cost of Disability Report and I intend to engage and consult with the sector on these reforms in the coming months. In the interim, I am today providing a €500 Disability Support Grant to all people in receipt of disability allowance, blind pension and invalidity pension in recognition of the additional cost of living pressures they face.

In December, the Christmas Bonus Double Payment will be paid to all Pensioners, Carers, Persons with Disabilities, One Parent Family Payment and other Social Protection recipients.

These are extraordinary times requiring an extraordinary response.

I believe this wide range of Lump Sum Payments will help to ease the burden on our most vulnerable as they face into the Winter months.

Officials in my Department are already working to put the IT systems in place to ensure that all of these payments will be issued throughout October, November and December when people will need the support most.

As we turn to 2023, I am today announcing a €12 euro increase in weekly rates of payment for pensioners and people of working age.

This measure alone will cost almost €900 million euro.

It is the largest budget increase in weekly payments since the mid-2000s.

As I have said, this is an extraordinary Budget and it must be viewed in the round looking at the impact of both the Lump Sum payments and the weekly increases.

If I could give you one example - A person on Disability Allowance who lives alone will receive an extra €2,140 into their pocket as a result of this Budget.

If you apply that over a year, it works out at over €41 per week.

You can do similar calculations for any group, whether its Pensions or Carers and you will see similar results.

What the Government is doing through the Lump Sum payments is frontloading those payments so that people have certainty and peace of minds over the winter months.

As many of you will be aware, in other years when a €5 across the Board increase was announced, it often meant there was no room for targeted measures.

That is not the case this year and I am pleased to have secured funding for a number of really important measures.

Recognising the burden on low income working families, I am increasing the income thresholds on working family payment by €40 across the board.

This will benefit working families on the payment by up to €24 euro per week.

This is the highest ever increase in the Working Family Payment thresholds and I am pleased that I can make this happen.

I am also continuing the policy of increasing the rates paid for the children of people on social welfare schemes.

I am raising the under-12 rate by €2 to €42 per child and the over-12 rate by €2 to €50 euro per child.

Over the last three Budgets, we have now increased the Under 12 rate by €6 and the Over 12 rate by €10.

I was very conscious, when addressing my Budget priorities for 2023, that many families and older people fall just outside the qualifying criteria for Fuel Allowance.

It was an absolute priority for me in the Budget to expand the reach of the scheme.

Today, I am announcing a number of new measures so that tens of thousands of new households will benefit from Fuel Allowance.

In doing this, I was particularly aware of the position of older people.

We all know, as we get older, we begin to feel the cold that little bit more.

We all have parents and grannies and grandas who we think the World of.

The one thing I don’t want to see as Minister is any old person sitting in their home afraid to turn on the heat.

That is why today I am announcing a new means test for Fuel Allowance for persons aged 70 and over.

For a single person over 70, they can now have income of up to €500 per week and qualify for fuel allowance, while a couple can have income of up to €1,000 per week.

I expect that between 60,000 – 70,000 new households will qualify for the scheme as a result of this change.

In addition to that, I am also improving the standard means test for the scheme by raising the means limit from €120 to €200 above the contributory pension rate.

I expect this will bring in an additional 17,000 households to the scheme.

I am announcing today that the half-rate carers allowance payments and disablement benefit will no longer be assessed in the fuel allowance means test.

This is the largest ever expansion of the Fuel Allowance Scheme and it will see almost 90,000 new households qualify for the payment.

This expansion will require significant system changes and IT development work and so will be effective from January 2023.

There are a number of other measures that I am announcing today that will make a huge difference to the people whom they affect.

I was determined this Budget would have a strong focus on people with disabilities.

Domiciliary Care Allowance is a payment made to the parents of children with severe disabilities.

Each year, there are a number of babies who are born with serious conditions that require them to remain in hospital after birth.

Under current Domiciliary Care Allowance legislation, children who don’t leave hospital after birth cannot qualify for the payment.

I believe this is unfair and so today I am announcing that we will amend these rules so that families in this very difficult situation will now qualify for the payment.

In addition, I am increasing the rate of payment from €309.50 to €330 per month. This is the first increase in the Domiciliary Care Allowance payment for many years.

I am also increasing the earnings disregard on Disability Allowance to €165 per week to allow those people with disabilities who can work to earn more and retain their social welfare payment.

In addition, I am also reforming and enhancing the Reasonable Accommodation Fund with a €1 Million Budget for next year to support more people with disabilities into the workforce.

To ensure we retain a focus on returning people to the labour market, I am increasing the top-up rate on employment schemes such as Community Employment, the Rural Social Scheme and Tús by €5 per week.

This means that, combined with the rate increase, participants on these schemes will see a rise of €17 per week next year.

I am also increasing the disregard on the farm assist scheme to ensure that the first €5000 of income received from agri-environmental schemes is not counted in the means test.

Finally, and with thanks to my colleague, Minister of State Joe O’Brien, we will develop and implement a pilot scheme next year to support people experiencing food poverty.

As I said earlier, these are extraordinary times.

Throughout the Budget process, I sought to secure resources for pensioners, for carers, for people with disabilities and for working families with children.

I did this to try to ease the pressure on these families as they are faced with cost of living increases not seen in decades.

While my job is to focus on those most in need, many of the other measures announced by Government today such as the energy credits will also assist people in low-income households.

€2.2 Billion is the largest Social Protection Budget package in the history of the State but even with that unprecedented level of intervention, it is still not possible to meet every demand or do everything we would wish to.

As a Government we are doing as much as we possibly can and I believe this is a fair and balanced budget package which will significantly ease the financial pressure faced by households throughout the Country.

Go raibh míle maith agaibh.