Kildare Nationalist — ‘€12 on the pension is not enough’: ALONE calls on Government to make the right decisions in tomorrow’s budget
Ahead of Budget 2024 which will be announced tomorrow (Tuesday), ALONE is reiterating their calls for an increase in the pension of at least €27.50.
The charity, which enables older people across Kildare to age at home, says that commitments have been made to benchmark the pension and that “€12 on the pension is not enough”.
The Roadmap for Social Inclusion committed to introducing benchmarking of the State pension to 34% of average wages by Budget 2021. This would require an increase to the pension of almost €50.
ALONE noted that today it has still not been completed, while people’s spending power is being diminished weekly.
“The Minister for Social Protection said earlier this year that benchmarking would be introduced as an input to the annual budget process and be submitted to Government in September each year, starting this year. But we see no evidence of this in the continuing Budget negotiations,” said a spokesperson for the charity.
“More than 165,000 older people experience income poverty and have continued to lose spending power since the last Budget. There are more than one million people aged 60+ living in Ireland today and this needs to be a Budget that supports them.”
ALONE are also calling on Government to implement the below key asks in this year’s Budget:
– To increase funding to Housing Adaptation Grants for older people and people with a disability, given there are ‘significant’ waiting lists and ten local authorities have had to request additional funding so far this year.
– To increase funding to the home support scheme to €1.05bn, accounting for the increasing demand for care and the need to provide better pay and conditions for workers.
– To provide €5 million in funding to combat loneliness, given that Ireland has the highest levels of loneliness in the EU and Government commitments to develop an action plan on loneliness ‘have not been followed through’.
