Christmas should be a time of joy, but for huge numbers of people it is a time of extreme financial pressure and hardship. James, who has worked all his life, had to go on a jobseeker's payment because of an injury that left him unable to do his old job. He went onto the back to education allowance. He has a wife and three children and because the Government has excluded people who have been on jobseeker's allowance for less than a year or who are on back to work and enterprise allowance, back to education allowance and illness benefit from the one-off cost-of-living payments and the fuel allowance, people like James and his family and thousands of others on those payments will have to endure all the cost-of-living hikes, the high bills and the cost of Christmas without getting the Christmas bonus, the fuel allowance or any of the one-off payments, including the double week payment in January. That is just not fair. I am asking, as I did last year, and we got a bit of movement last year-----

Thank you, Deputy

-----for those one-off payments and fuel allowances-----

Time is up, Deputy, please.

-----and additional payments to be extended to the people in those categories.

The Government took a range of measures, as the Deputy said, including the €12 increase in weekly social welfare and pension rates, which will apply to all cases, increased rates in the qualified child payment, increased thresholds for the working family payment, which does not apply in this case - I do not know the full circumstances - the extension of child benefit to 18-year-olds in full-time education, and the various other measures we took to facilitate families-----

What about these groups?

----which will apply to those groups. Many of these-----

No, it will not.

Some aspects the Deputy identified will not, but many others will-----

Why have they been left out?

Wait now. We will not have a back and forth.

-----in respect of the various reductions we have facilitated right across-----

They are being left out unfairly.

-----the cost of public services more generally.