I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." As colleagues know, Standing Order 174A provides that pre-legislative scrutiny is not required for a social welfare Bill which gives effect to budget measures. This Bill provides the legislative basis for the key social welfare budget measures. It also provides for some technical amendments to the Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Act in advance of the system going live in January, a few short weeks away. Looking first at the social welfare budget measures, the total social protection budget for 2026 is €28.9 billion, an increase of 7.4% on budget 2025. This includes over €1.15 billion in new measures on top of an underlying increase of €930 million for the existing level of service. The social welfare budget package prioritises measures to support children, which reflects the Government's, the Taoiseach's and my commitment to reduce child poverty over the lifetime of this Government. In total, the social welfare package in budget 2026 contains over €320 million in targeted measures to tackle child poverty. This is a significant investment and is on top of other cross-government child-related measures that are contained in budget 2026. Specifically concerning social protection, the measures included in the Bill provide for the largest ever increase in the child support payment, increases of €8 per week for children under 12 and €16 per week for children aged 12 and over. The increases will bring the payments up to €58 per week for a child under 12 and €78 per week for a child aged 12 and over, which will directly benefit about 330,000 children whose parents are in receipt of a social welfare payment. There is also an increase in the income threshold for the working family payment by €60 per week for all family sizes. There are about 50,000 families, with over 100,000 children, in receipt of this payment. An increase of €20 per month in the domiciliary care allowance, to €380, will directly benefit about 60,000 households and 70,000 children. There is an increase in the weekly personal rates of payment by €10 per week, with proportionate increases for qualified adults. The increase of €10 in the personal rate is equivalent, this year, to about 4.1% compared to inflation of about 2.7%. For pensions, the increase is about 3.5%. The back-to-work family dividend scheme, which allows people to retain their child support payment on taking up a job, will be extended to people on disability allowance and the blind pension. This change will mean that parents who are on a disability payment will continue to receive a full payment of their child support payments for up to four children for the first year and half that amount for the following year. This change is being made now to ensure that families who depend on disability payments have the same income security and support as those on other working age payments when they transition from welfare to full-time employment. The Bill also provides for an increase in the employer PRSI threshold, which reflects the increase in the national minimum wage. Other measures announced by the Minister on budget day, but which do not require primary legislation in the Social Welfare Bill, include a range of improvements to the payment and eligibility to the fuel allowance scheme. The rate of payment will increase by €5 per week to €38 per week during the fuel season. The fuel allowance scheme will be extended to families in receipt of the working family payment, and people on disability allowance and blind pension payments who find employment will be able to keep their fuel allowance payment for five years even after they take up the job. This is important in preventing cliff-edge losses and in reassuring people with disability they will not lose out if they take up employment. Many people acquire an illness or a disability while in work. A key issue is encouraging their employers to adapt their workplaces to help those employees stay in work. The wage subsidy scheme, which provides a wage subsidy to employers who employ disabled people of between €6.93 and €9.45 per hour, is currently only available when an employer hires a new worker who is currently in receipt of a disability payment. From next year, the subsidy will be available to people who are already in work and who acquire a disability that would qualify them to move onto a disability payment. This addresses a critical issue of supporting employers to hold on to their workers who become disabled. The worker will be able to qualify for a partial capacity benefit payment and the employer will be able to receive a wage subsidy. I am also increasing the base rate of the wage subsidy scheme to €7.50 per hour, which is a vital measure for employers when recruiting, and now retaining, people with disabilities. In the programme for Government, we have set out an ambitious goal to abolish the means test for carers over the life of the Government. In budget 2026, we are increasing the income disregard for a single person by €375 a week to €1,000. That is an increase of 60% and means that a single person who provides full-time care but does some part-time work can earn just over €54,000 per year from that work and receive a full carer’s payment. In parallel, I am also increasing the income disregard for a couple by 60%, or €750, to €2,000 per week. That means that a person who is caring in a household where their partner might earn up to €108,000 per annum will receive a full carer's payment. These are the largest ever increases in the carer’s income disregards and they are evidence of the Government's determination to deliver on its commitment to eliminate the means test over the life of the Government. As Minister for Social Protection with a dual brief covering the Department of Rural and Community Development agus An Ghaeltacht, I am very much aware of the power of schemes that are operated by the Department of Social Protection that have a dual mandate. These schemes help those on welfare by helping them to help their communities. Programmes such as community employment, Tús, and the rural social scheme are hugely important, not only in giving people a sense of purpose and a direction forward but in helping to sustain communities. Key supports such as meals on wheels, Tidy Towns and many others would simply not exist without these schemes. In budget 2026, I have secured an increase to the additional payment, or the top-up, offered to people on welfare who participate on a CE, Tús or RSS scheme to €32.50 for 19.5 hours per week. I am also pleased to increase the value of the materials cost grant by up to €1,000 for each community employment sponsor. The back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance is being extended to two- and three-year olds. In addition, the Christmas bonus to be paid in the week commencing 1 December will be paid on the same basis as last year. I will now discuss the Bill section by section. Section 1 provides for definitions of the relevant Acts. Looking at section 2, the weekly earnings of an employee determine the PRSI rate an employer pays on behalf of that employee. Currently, employer PRSI is charged at a rate of 9.0% on weekly earnings between €38 and €527. When weekly earnings are in excess of €527 the employer PRSI at the higher rate of 11.25% applies. The earnings threshold increase from €527 to €552 in section 2 takes account of the forthcoming increase in the minimum wage from €13.50 to €14.15 per hour. Employers with employees on the national minimum wage will, therefore, continue to attract the lower rate of employer PRSI. This measure comes into effect in January and will save employers some €645 annually on employer PRSI for each of their employees working full-time on the minimum wage. Section 3 provides for a €10 increase in the weekly rate of maternity benefit to €299 from January coming. Sections 4, 5 and 6 provide for the equivalent increases in relation to adoptive benefit, paternity benefit and parent's benefit, respectively. Section 7 is to give effect to the increases in the graduated rates of jobseeker’s benefit and jobseeker’s benefit for the self-employed. Section 8 is an administrative amendment in relation to the newborn baby grant, which is a once-off €280 payment for newborn or adopted children given in addition to the first month of a child benefit payment. It extends the period of time that a person may qualify for the payment from one month to three months. The working family payment provides extra financial support to working families on low pay who have children. Section 9 provides for a €60 increase in the weekly income thresholds of working family payment for all family sizes. This will mean that existing recipients whose employment earnings do not increase will see their payments rise by €36 per week. Section 10 extends the back-to-work family dividend to recipients of the blind pension and the disability allowance. Section 11 and Schedule 1 provide for increases in the rates of social insurance payments. There will be a €10 per week increase in the maximum personal rate of the PRSI-based benefits set out in the Schedule. This section also provides for the largest ever increases to the child support payment, as well as proportional increases for qualified adults. Section 12 provides for €10 increases in social assistance, in other words, means-tested payments, with proportional increases for qualified adults. It also provides for the budget increases to the child support payment. Domiciliary care allowance is a payment in recognition of the additional costs involved in caring for children with a severe disability. It is not means tested. Section 13 provides for an increase in the rate of payment from €360 to €380 a month. Section 14 is a technical amendment, correcting the reference to a section in the Taxes Consolidation Act, following an amendment in the Finance Bill. This concludes the social welfare and budget measures in the Bill. As the House will be aware, the forthcoming introduction of My Future Fund will take place from January. This is a transformative scheme that will improve the lives of many people by helping them to save now and build up a retirement pot that will give them security in retirement. Put simply, for every €3 a worker saves, the employer will be required to add another €3 and the State will also provide a top-up, so that every €3 saved by a worker turns into €7. That €7 will be invested on behalf of the worker, so the worker will benefit not just from the employer and State top-ups but from investment returns. Budget 2026 commits some €154 million to fund State top-up contributions for the automatic enrolment retirement savings system next year. A further €23.7 million in funding is being provided for the administration of the National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority. My Future Fund has been discussed and planned for many years but is now happening and starts in January, just seven weeks away. Given the tight timeline for the commencement of My Future Fund, some technical amendments have been included in the social welfare budget Bill, in section 15. These amendments have no material impact on the provisions of the Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Act, which was passed by the Oireachtas in 2024, or the policy intent that underlines the Act. I will go through the amendments now for the benefit of the House. In section 15(1), paragraphs (a) and (b) relate to the change in implementation timelines out to January 2026. Paragraph (a) restores the original policy intent to provide for six months from the establishment date of the National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority for the development of the statement of strategy. Similarly, paragraph (b) provides for the reporting period for the Pensions Authority's first supervisory report to cover the period from 14 October 2025 to 31 December 2026. The amendment in paragraph (c) grants the National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority a provision for operational flexibility in assigning an automatic enrolment retirement savings date using Revenue payroll data. This provision is limited, giving flexibility of no more than 31 days. The amendment is necessary, particularly at calendar year-end periods, when some employers bring January payroll runs forward to mid-December. The automatic enrolment legislation further requires that the employer notify their employee that they have been enrolled. However, it currently does not specify a time period for this notice to be provided. This amendment sets out a requirement of providing notice to the employee within 14 days from the receipt of the determination of enrolment given to the employer. Paragraph (d) mirrors this previous amendment, in terms of assigning an enrolment date and the employer notification, for employees who opt in to the automatic enrolment retirement savings system. Paragraph (e) amends the requirement that all subcontractors of investment management providers be a regulated financial services provider. In practice, investment management providers, like all other businesses, use subcontractors to provide a wide range of services, including, for example, IT, logistics, facilities and security management. The proposed change retains the position that the investment management provider itself shall be a regulated financial services provider within the meaning of the Central Bank Acts. As a safeguard, it also provides that the authority may, at its discretion, require that some selected subcontractors would likewise be regulated. Looking at the final amendment to the automatic enrolment legislation, the current Act provides for offences relating to hindering an employee from participating in the automatic enrolment retirement savings system and that offences relating to the non-payment of contributions be dealt with through a fixed payment notice procedure. The amendment in paragraphs (f) and (g) extends this to include any contravention of the provisions that obligate an employer to provide a notice to an employee of their enrolment in My Future Fund. This amendment reflects that low-level regulatory breaches are best suited to being dealt with under the fixed payment notice procedure. This concludes the amendments in the Bill relating to the Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Act. Finally, section 16 is the Short Title of the Act. In commending the Bill to the House, I thank the 7,000 or so people who work across this country in the Department of Social Protection to ensure that the benefits of the Department and its work make a difference to families and communities right across the country. It is my privilege to be their Minister and to introduce my first social welfare Bill.

Sentiment score: 0.24

Gabhaim buíochas le gach Teachta as a gcuid óráidí anocht. Bhí turas suimiúil againn. Ní coimirce sóisialaí amháin a phléamar. Bhí muid ag caint faoi dhroichid, faoi bheithígh agus faoi gach rud. Gabhaim buíochas le gach Teachta a chur suim sa díospóireacht agus a thug am don ábhar tábhachtach seo. Tá sé thar a bheith tábhachtach a rá go bhfuil €28.9 billiún le caitheamh ar chúrsaí coimirce sóisialaí sa chéad bliain eile. We will be spending €28.9 billion in the Department of Social Protection in 2026, which includes €1.15 billion in new measures. That is a record amount and a record investment in families, in communities and in people across the country. I said in opening the debate that we had prioritised resources and concentrated on a number of areas. A number of Deputies have raised the whole area of child poverty but we have provided the largest ever increases in the rates of child support payments, which are specifically targeted at people on social protection and on the lowest incomes. We have increased the threshold for the working family payment. We have increased the domiciliary care allowance, DCA. I have also applied extra resources to addressing appeals in DCA this year to try to get as quick a response as possible. Among all of the social protection budget measures, the €10 is in excess of this year's inflation rate. I accept that there is grocery inflation and energy inflation and that is why we have done targeted measures in extending the fuel allowance to those on the working family payment and also making changes to the fuel allowance for those people on disability. Therefore, there have been very targeted measures on this occasion and they are not one-off. They are permanent, targeted payments that will assist people and families. I will try to deal with some of the issues that were in the remit of the Bill. I will not get to them all. We will have the chance to discuss them at parliamentary questions tomorrow and at committee next week. Deputy O'Reilly and a number of Deputies raised the issue of jobseeker's pay-related benefit. Budget 2026 does not provide for a change in jobseeker's pay-related benefit because it is a new scheme and I needed to go through an annual cycle to see the impact on workers, as the Deputy predicted I would say.

Sentiment score: 0.12

We are having that impact. We are also looking at a pay-related approach in a number of other areas. The increases in PRSI that are contained in the PRSI roadmap are to address the future sustainability of the Social Insurance Fund, as well as pay-related benefit schemes. I remind the House that we are paying up to €450 per week to recipients under this scheme, which is €200 more than jobseekers' payments. I recognise that many Deputies raised the cost of disability. We are committed in the programme for Government to introducing a permanent and annual cost-of-disability support payment. We have started the work on that not only within our Department but through the Taoiseach's Department, the disability programme office and the Cabinet committee on disability. We have set up within our Department a strategic, focused network on the cost of disability and have begun our engagements with the disability groups as to what a cost-of-disability payment might look like, who should get it and the various issues that need to go into it. I have asked my officials to have that work completed ahead of next year's budget. It is complex and there is a lot of work involved in it, but I am confident that I will be in a position to bring a proposal to the Government ahead of next year's budget. Deputy O'Reilly and, I think, virtually every other Deputy raised the carer's allowance. The full cost of abolishing the means test for the carer's allowance is €600 million. We will deliver that over the lifetime of this Government. From next July, a household on an income of €104,000 will be able to claim a full social welfare payment for carer's allowance. That is the first time that level of income can qualify for a social welfare payment. We will closely monitor the inflows arising because many people may make a decision now to seek carer's allowance. I may have a chance to discuss this again in the morning and in committee in detail next week on Committee Stage. I have dealt with child poverty. To respond to Deputy Hayes, the ESRI in its post-budget analysis stated that there will be a decrease in the rate of child poverty as a consequence of the budget measures, in particular the child support payment. That will not come through for another two years in terms of the figures being measured, but I think it pretty much will show that. Deputy Healy spoke of the cliff edge for people with disabilities who lose secondary benefits, as did Deputy Boyd Barrett. It is good to have the latter back in the Chamber and to see him in fighting form. In budget 2026 we ensured that those with disabilities can retain their fuel allowance payment for five years after taking up work. We have also extended the back-to-work family dividend to people on disability allowance in order that they can keep their child support payment for up to four children for a full year and 50% for the second year. Deputy Stanley raised quite a number of issues around auto-enrolment, which I will move on to now. There has been a lot of debate about auto-enrolment in this House over recent years. With the greatest of respect, while Deputies come in and say they know nothing about it, there have been many opportunities to discuss it and to share the information. In particular, since I have come into office, I have provided briefings, audiovisual room hearings and updates on it. As regards the specific areas, Deputy O'Reilly raised the issue in relation to the NTMA. There are a number of reasons the NTMA is not the best institution to manage retirement savings funds through the automatic enrolment system. First, the NTMA manages State money. It does not, in our opinion, have the systems, the knowledge or the processes to manage up to 750,000 individual savings. This is a key part of auto-enrolment. It is not State money; it is the money of everybody who has enrolled. That is one thing. The NTMA does not have the skills to do that. Second, we wanted a dedicated expert function through NAERSA to manage AE and to give confidence to people whose future is dependent on the success of it. NAERSA is making the independent choices in that regard. The NTMA also reports to different Departments. In terms of efficiency, it is important that NAERSA reports to my Department. The NTMA invests State money in the international stock market. It uses commercial investment managers from private industry to do that, which is what NAERSA will do with people's retirement savings. I welcome Deputy Hayes's acknowledgement of the increased supervision within the Bill. In relation to the funding for community and voluntary groups, my Department has been quite proactive in advising other Departments, including the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, about this issue throughout 2025 and about all the money that is necessary. We have also engaged with employers and have had extensive engagement across the system in relation to automatic enrolment since our straw man public consultation in 2018. We have made every effort over recent years to ensure that people knew that this was due to be enacted. It was due to be enacted from September of this year, and there was quite a lot of coverage earlier this year when we extended it to January. There has therefore been a substantial lead-in period. It is not just for the community and voluntary groups; it is for businesses small and large. We stacked the contributions deliberately to assist people, not just savers but also businesses, in stepping it up such that it is a phased in approach and they can prepare further contributions. We will continue on the basis of this evening's debate to remind my colleagues in the Government - I will do so formally again - of the fact that we will start this on 1 January and that they should make provision for it and should make information available. In relation to Deputy O'Donoghue's point about older people in automatic enrolment, the system has been designed to be simple and for people to understand it. Every €3 a person puts in, the employer puts in another €3 and the State tops up by €1, so that €3 becomes €7. It is a significant carrot. Your €3 becomes €7 regardless of your age. I once again emphasise the point that the contributory pension and the non-contributory pension remain as the bedrock of our State pension system. For somebody who is on the average industrial wage, which is around €46,000 at the moment, when you drop to €16,000, it is a huge drop for the 750,000 to 800,000 people who have no other plans in place. Auto-enrolment will not make up the entire gap; it will make up a significant gap and make a big difference. In terms of the assessments of AE, we have published a macro and a microeconomic assessment, the SME test around automatic enrolment and the poverty test around automatic enrolment. I am not sure whether it was a mistake on Deputy Hayes's part but he mentioned that an employee could be down €300 to €1,200 a month after being enrolled in My Future Fund. I do not think so.

Sentiment score: 0.12

It is a year. If it were a month, that would be gross earnings of €20,000 to €80,000 a month, so I presume he is talking about annual contributions. That €300 becomes €700 for the participant after the employer and the State contribution. That is put aside for their future. Deputy Stanley spoke of the exclusion of people earning under €20,000 from AE and the exclusion of part-time workers. It is possible for those workers to opt in. The reason they were not being automatically enrolled is affordability. If they have a number of part-time jobs that reach the threshold, they can choose to be enrolled. I thank all the Deputies. We will have Committee Stage next week and we will have further engagement. I once again emphasise that I can make any officials available - and I commend Deputy O'Reilly, who has taken up this offer on several occasions - to brief on automatic enrolment. It is a major step change, but the officials in my Department have been more than generous with their time and expertise. I encourage every party to follow Deputy O'Reilly's proactivity in this space. We will brief them. They might not like the answers but we will absolutely give them the information. I commend the Bill to the House.

Sentiment score: 0.13