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.