Income thresholds and welfare traps
Deputy Curran argued that increases in wages and welfare can leave people worse off when related thresholds for cards and grants do not rise with them. The Taoiseach agreed that perverse outcomes occur and said income limits were under review, citing an upcoming increase in the GP visit card threshold.
In recent budgets the Government increased the minimum wage and social welfare payments by €5 per week. The budgets also saw the USC ceiling and PRSI thresholds increased to ensure that the increases the Government was paying to people were received. That was good insofar as it went. The increases were modest and welcome but they did not make people wealthy. Largely, they meant that the people who received those increases were keeping pace with the increased costs they were meeting in their daily lives. However, other income thresholds across other grants and schemes have not kept pace with changes. In particular, the student grant scheme has not gone up. The same applies to thresholds for medical cards, the GP card and the over 70s card.
Will the Taoiseach review income thresholds across all Departments for grants and schemes to ensure they increase in line with budget day announcements and increases? If a person gets an increase in social welfare payments that is modest but loses a medical card or fails to get a third-level grant, he or she is at a big loss. That is the problem we must address.
Comment on this
Deputy Curran makes a valid point. We can have perverse situations whereby someone gets an increase in pay or in a welfare payment and as a result loses entitlement to a medical card or a grant and then, in net terms, ends up worse off. Overall, of course, people are better off but we can have individual cases where people end up worse off.
The income limits are under review. They do not have to be done on budget day; they can be done during the year. For example, in March the income limit for the general practitioner visit card will increase by €25 per week per adult. That is a far greater increase than people would have got from the minimum wage increases or welfare changes. A similar commitment is made for the medical card for pensioners. The idea is that pensioners would not lose the medical card because of a €5 per week increase in the pension. The short answer is "Yes", but it is not necessarily all done on budget day.