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Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland

Poll: Should social welfare payments be linked to inflation?

Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar raised the possibility of welfare payments increasing with inflation last week.

THIS MORNING, A report in The Sunday Times suggests that some of Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar’s ministerial counterparts are less than pleased that he has thrown his weight behind a campaign to link social welfare payments with inflation.

Criticisms from the anonymous ministers include a suggestion that the implications of such a move have not been thought through, and the fact that Cabinet was not consulted prior to Varadkar’s suggestion, which was made at the MacGill Summer School in Donegal last week.

“Were it not for social welfare payments… over half of the country would be at risk of poverty,” he said at the time, before he emphasised the need to “protect the value of these payments now and into the future”.

But what do you think?

We’re asking: Should social welfare payments be indexed against the rate of inflation?


Poll Results:

No (5997)
Yes (5972)
I don't know (951)

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