Social welfare payments 'should increase by €100 a month'
Social Justice Ireland has called for core social welfare payments to be increased by around €100 a month by linking them to 27.5% of the average annual wage.
A call has been made for social welfare recipients to be given 27.5% of the average annual wage. Social Justice Ireland has argued that this benchmark would help protect social welfare recipients against inflation fluctuations.
The think tank believes that this flexible approach would give certainty to recipients that as prices rise, so would their payments.
Social Justice Ireland spokesperson Susanne Rogers said this would give both Ministers and social welfare recipients certainty each year, Dublin Live reports. She added that the 27.5% of the average annual wage benchmark would "make a massive difference."
"This would roughly translate to €25 per week or around €100 per month of an increase. It's just really important that, as inflation rises, wages will follow and that social welfare would keep in line with those increases,” she told Newstalk.
“It would also give certainty, I think, as well to Government that they would know what would be expected. As well as anybody who's in receipt of a core social welfare rate, again, that they would have maybe some sort of an idea as to what they could expect in the coming budget.”
Arguing that 27.5% would be an appropriate, she continued: “That is actually the same benchmark that Government committed to in 2007.
“At the moment, that would require an uplift of €25 a week to average social welfare. It's not a huge amount and that would make such a massive difference.”
She added that it is unlikely to encourage people to give up work.
“A life on a social welfare rate of €250 a week for a single adult to pay your rent, your heat, your light, your food, your bins, your mobile phone, your haircuts, everything,” she said. “You have condemned yourself to a life of poverty.
“If you are making a conscious decision to turn down paid work to remain on social welfare, it is about people who are finding it difficult to access employment.”
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