A call has been made for social welfare recipients to receive 27.5% of the average annual wage, with Social Justice Ireland arguing that this benchmark would help protect recipients against inflation fluctuations.
Social Justice Ireland believes this flexible approach would give recipients certainty that as prices rise, so too would their payments, reports The Mirror.
Social Justice Ireland spokesperson Susanne Rogers said the benchmark would give both ministers and social welfare recipients certainty each year, adding that the 27.5% figure 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, reports The Mirror.
“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 benchmark, 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,” reports The Mirror.
She added that the increase was unlikely to discourage people from working. “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,” reports The Mirror.
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