JAMIE SMYTH, Social Affairs Correspondent

JAMIE SMYTH, Social Affairs Correspondent

CHILDREN, unemployed people, the disabled and carers will feel the brunt of the €873 million cuts to the social welfare budget next year, with an average of a 4.1 per cent reduction in welfare payments.

Pensioners escape any cut to the State pension, though Minister for Social Protection Éamon Ó Cuív said wealthy pensioners would contribute through new changes made to the tax system.

The hundreds of thousands of people currently on the Live Register will experience an €8 per week cut in their jobseeker’s allowance to €188 per week.

A range of other welfare payments – illness, health and safety, injury, one-parent family, widow’s allowance and disability/blind allowance – will fall by the same amount to a weekly payment worth €188 per week.

Child benefit payments will be reduced by €10 per month for first and second children – to €140 per month, in a cost-saving measure designed to save €149 million for the exchequer.

Payments for a third child will by cut by €20 to €167 per month, while claimants will receive € 177 per month for fourth and subsequent children.

Unlike in previous budgets, the Government did not increase separate targeted schemes – the qualified child increase and family income supplement – to compensate families on low incomes.

Supplementary welfare allowance, which is generally paid to people awaiting a decision on a social welfare claim, will fall by €10 to €186.

Maternity benefit and welfare payments to adoptive parents will fall by €8 to €217.80.

The rate of jobseeker’s allowance or supplementary welfare allowance paid to people aged 18 to 21 will remain unchanged at €100.

For people aged 23 and 24, these benefits will be reduced to €144 in January.

Carer’s benefit will fall to €205 per week, down from €213.

But extra payments for people caring for more than one person have been maintained and carers will continue to get the annual respite grant of €1,700.

Invalidity pension, disablement pension and death benefit pensions paid to people under 66 years of age will face a reduction of €8 following the budget.

The cutbacks in these working-age payments should result in savings worth €397 million for the Department of Social Protection.

Additional savings are targeted from: a shake-up of the rent supplement scheme (€60 million); reducing the number of people signing on the dole (€100 million); energy and communications benefits (€30 million); treatment benefits (€77 million); administrative efficiencies (€11 million); and a range of other measures such as fraud detection (€49 million).

Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan said welfare rates remained high in Ireland, much higher than in Britain. The average 4.1 per cent reduction in welfare payments meant working-age payments remained slightly above those paid in 2007.

Mr Ó Cuív said the adjustments were necessary as pensioners, carers and unemployed people would face far greater cuts in the future if they weren’t made.

“I’m aware the changes we make will affect the lives of many citizens . . . spending will still be at €20.6 billion in 2011,” he said.

Mr Ó Cuív said the rent supplement scheme, which costs the exchequer about €500 million a year, would be reformed in the new year.

He said this would make tenants who receive the supplement pay an additional €2 per week towards their rents.

The reform would also seek to make it mandatory for rent supplement recipients to move into local authority housing when they are offered it, rather than staying in private rented accommodation.

Mr Ó Cuív said this should save €60 million.