Budget 2017: Leo Varadkar: End of recession budget

Increased weekly payments for pensioners and welfare recipients in the budget will feel like “the end of the recession” for many people, Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar has declared.

However, the Fine Gael minister brushed off criticism about not equally increasing welfare payments for young jobseekers, saying that he wanted them to go and get a job or to go back to education.

Pensioners, carers, widows and the disabled, among others, will get a €5 rise in their weekly social benefits as part of a €301m package for Mr Varadkar’s department.

While social welfare claimants will see comparable increases in general under the budget, younger recipients out of work will only get around half the rise in payments compared to their elders.

The changes will be put on hold, though, until March after it was decided the delayed introduction would allow payment increases to be spread more evenly among groups.

The pension, widow’s pension, carer’s benefit and maternity benefit will all go up by €5.

However, different rates will apply for changes to jobseekers’ allowance rates.

Unemployed people aged 18 to 24 years of age will only get an extra €2.70 a week, while those aged 25 will get €3.80 and people on jobseekers’ allowance over 26 years of age will get an extra €5.

Opposition TDs and campaign groups for the homeless warned that this difference “discriminated” against young people.

AAA TD Paul Murphy said: “The Government has doubled down on discrimination against young people by neglecting to give them even the meagre €5 that they claimed to be giving to all social welfare recipients.”

However, Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe defended the welfare increases, saying several groups had not seen rises in seven years.

Minister Varadkar went further. He said a comparable increase for young jobseekers would have sent out the “wrong message”. Instead, the best thing for those young jobseekers was to actually take up a job or education, he said.

“There are lots of jobs and education, I want young people taking them up.”

Increases for different benefits from carers to invalids would see up to 840,000 people benefit, Mr Varadkar told a press conference. Many had not been increased since 2009, it was added, and had been cut twice under the Fianna Fail-Green government.

“For a lot of people, this signals the end of the recession,” said Mr Varadkar.

The minister described how there had been much discussion in government about whether the increase would be €4 or €5 and whether it would apply from January or June.

Government had also concluded that jobseekers should be treated equally, he said. The minister also claimed he had persuaded his government colleagues that other benefits aside from pensions would have to be increased in the budget. It would also have cost €190m more if the increases were introduced in January.

Lone parents will also get a €5 weekly increase while there will also be a new €500 annual Cost of Education Allowance. Up to 350,000 self-employed people will also get long term illness and treatment benefits.

PRSI payers will also get dental and optical benefits, Mr Varadkar said.