A one-off payment to tackle the cost-of-living crisis for low-income households is set to be agreed by a Cabinet subcommittee and rolled out within weeks.
The committee will meet this week to tackle the impact of rising inflation, with a number of options on the table including a doubling of the €100 electricity credit for households, waiving of hospital fees, and reducing the cost of public transport.
According to the Irish Examiner report, One senior minister told, that although it has not yet been decided officially, it is likely there will also be a one-off payment of around €100 to low-income families and older people.
“The focus will be on something one-off and simple to do,” the minister said.
Another minister said officials tasked with looking for options to reduce the cost of living are expected to present a menu of choices in the coming days.
“We still have to implement the decision on the electricity credit,” the minister said. “That’ll be in the next number of weeks and it’s important that it can be done quickly. We haven’t seen options on paper yet but it will be today or Tuesday. Things like tweaking the fuel allowance only benefit a certain cohort, whereas the electricity credit is universal, so we might see some kind of combination of those, but there will be a few elements to the package.”
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the Government wants to move quickly on the issue.
“We want to move with some degree of speed and efficiency in terms of alleviating the impact of inflation on people. That’s the primary purpose of these measures.
“We would hope by the end of this week that we’d be in a position to announce the actual specific timelines.”
Using the social welfare system to tackle the issue is “one avenue we’ll certainly be pursuing,” the Taoiseach told RTÉ, saying that there are “other mechanisms within the social welfare code that we could deploy” rather than increasing the base rate.
News credit: Irishexaminer