MINISTER Dara Calleary has confirmed that there are “no plans” to extend the €140 Child Benefit cash to all children aged under 18 who don’t currently qualify for the monthly payment.
Instead, the Government are focused on “targeted” payments for those most at risk of poverty.
Weekly Child Benefit payments to 16,000 children were “stopped” this year as there was no evidence the teenagers were in full time education.
The Minister for Social Protection said: “There are currently no plans to extend Child Benefit in respect of 16, 17 or 18 year olds who are not in full-time education or training.
“It is important that the Child Benefit payment reflects our policy objective of encouraging young people to remain in education or to avail of the very many training options that are available to them including those available through YouthReach and the Community Training Centres.”
Calleary was addressing People Before Profit leader Richard Boyd Barrett, who had asked the estimated cost of increasing Child Benefit by 10 per cent and extending the payment to all children aged 18 or under, including those in the international protection process.
Increasing Child Benefit by 10 per cent would bring the payment to €154 each month.
Child Benefit is currently paid at a rate of €140 per child monthly to over 650,000 families in respect of over 1.2 million children.
Payments are universal, and are given to parents regardless of their income – but it has risen by less than €10 in the last 20 years.
The monthly payment for a first child was €131.60 in 2004 and stands at €140 now, just six per cent higher.
The Child Benefit rate reached €166 during the Celtic Tiger era, but was reduced during the recession to its current rate.
And Calleary said upping the payment by 10 per cent for everyone, including those under 18 not in education and children in the International Protection process, would cost the State €256.5 million.
He explained: “Child Benefit is currently in payment in respect of approximately 1.2 million children with an estimated expenditure of €2.2 billion for 2025.
“The cost of increasing Child Benefit by 10 per cent would result in additional annual expenditure on the scheme of approximately €218 million based on the estimated number of recipients in 2025.”
Calleary said approximately the Child Benefit payments of approximately 16,000 children aged 16 to 18 has their payments stopped this year as there was no evidence they were in education.
He added: “Extending Child Benefit to these individuals, assuming that they were all single births, would therefore cost approximately €27 million annually.”
To get Child Benefit, parents must be living in Ireland and meet the Habitual Residence Condition.
Applicants for International Protection do not satisfy this condition and are there not eligible for Child Benefit.
Calleary said that paying Child Benefit to Internal Protection Applicants residing in accommodation provided by IPAS would cost the State around €11.5m each year.
The total combined cost for the measures requested could therefore be estimated at around €256.5 million each year.
€285 CHILD BENEFIT BOOST
Research by the State’s economic think tank looked at the effect of bringing in a second tier of Child Benefit to address child poverty, at a cost of €800m.
And Taoiseach Micheal Martin confirmed that the Government is considering a second-tier Child Benefit payment targeted at poorer families in a bid to combat child poverty.
He said: “I have a unit within the Department that is focusing on this issue and I’ve already spoken to Minister for Social Protection Dara Calleary on this.
“Nothing is off the table. There is a wide menu of options to choose from to target resources to meaningfully impact on the child poverty situation.”
The €140 flat payment would still be paid to everyone, regardless of income.
But a “second-tier” allowance worth an average of €285 per month would allow lower-income families to top up the existing €140-a-month benefit.
NO €2.2B COST OF LIVING PACKAGE
The second-tier allowance talks come as Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe confirmed Budget 2026 “will not repeat” another €2.2 billion of living package.
The Fine Gael TD said past budgets introduced measures when inflation was at highs of five, 10 or 15 per cent.
The Government has instead this year leaned more towards the possible introduction of “targeted” payments for those most at risk of poverty.
The Budget 2025 package – the largest in the history of the State – was made up of a mixture of increased payments, 10 once-off lump sums for social welfare recipients, a minimum wage increase and tax changes.
It included two double Child Benefit payments handed out before Christmas, €400 extra for carers and €300 for those on Fuel Allowance.
Budget 2025 also provided an additional October cost-of-living double payment as well as the usual social welfare Christmas bonus.
But Donohoe and Public Expenditure Minister Jack Chambers previously admitted that they are reluctant to make any spending or taxation decisions in Budget 2026 that “create new risks”.
DOLE FREEZE
Yesterday, Tanaiste Simon Harris claimed that people on the dole should not get the same budget pay bounce as pensioners while Ireland is at full employment.
In their general election manifesto, Fianna Fail promised to increase all core welfare payments by €12 annually while Fine Gael committed to increasing the State pension to €350 over the lifetime of the government.
With businesses struggling to find workers to fill vacant positions, Tanaiste Simon Harris indicated that the Government may freeze the jobseekers allowance at its current level instead of including it in any social welfare increases in the upcoming budget.
Asked if the Government will separate the jobseekers allowance from other welfare hikes, the Tanaiste told the Irish Sun: “Budgets are all about choices.
“They are all about balance and there is only so much money in the pot so I will keep an open mind on that.
“I’m not convinced that you need to see as significant a rise in the dole as you do in the pension for example at a time when our country is in full employment and there’s lots of supports out there for people getting into work and there is other supports out there for people who can’t work for very many good reasons.”
