Many welfare and minimum wage households 'failing to reach minimum standards of living'

Many households relying on social welfare or the minimum wage do not have enough money to make ends meet, according to a new report.

The study, part-funded by the Department of Social Protection, found that it costs between €427-729 per week to provide a standard of living for a family of two adults and two children.

The report, entitled 'A Minimum Income Standard for Ireland: a consensual budget standards study examining household types across the lifecycle', also examined the minimum wage required by a variety of different households, including pensioners, single people and families with children.

It found that families with either young babies or teenagers require more money to participate in society.

One of the authors of the report, Dr Micheal Collins, explained what the minimum standard of living meant.

"Just have money to get by, pay your bills, be able to have a basic level of interaction with society - in effect to be able to participate in a society," he said.

"It's not a particularly comfortable standard of living, it is intended to be establishing what the baseline is.

"That's why it encompasses over 2,000 goods - that's it's everything from basic food across to some level of social participation, across to household insurance; the other basics that one would expect in a lifestyle."

Another of the report's authors, D Bernadette MacMahon, said that expenses vary depending on a child's age, and child benefit payments should reflect this.

"Babies cost a lot," she said. "Also, once you have a child in secondary school, then there's an enormous difference, enormous increase in expenditure.

"We are asking that social welfare, especially child benefit, be age-related."