A one-off payment to tackle the cost of living crisis for low-income households is set to be agreed by a Cabinet subcommittee before being rolled out in a number of weeks.
The committee will meet this week to discuss measures to tackle the impact of inflation. The Government has previously announced a €100 rebate for every household to tackle rising energy costs.
A senior minister told the Irish Examiner that a one-off payment of around €100 to low-income families and older people is also under consideration, although it has not yet been decided officially.
“The focus will be on something one-off and simple to do,” the minister said.
Another minister said a range of choices will be considered in the bid to address the rising cost of living.
“We still have to implement the decision on the electricity credit,” the minister said. “That’ll be in the next number of weeks and it’s important that it can be done quickly. We haven’t seen options on paper yet, but it will be today or Tuesday.
"Things like tweaking the fuel allowance only benefit a certain cohort, whereas the electricity credit is universal, so we might see some kind of combination of those, but there will be a few elements to the package.”
Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said the Government will move quickly to address the issue.
“We want to move with some degree of speed and efficiency in terms of alleviating the impact of inflation on people. That’s the primary purpose of these measures.
“We would hope by the end of this week that we’d be in a position to announce the actual specific timelines.”
The Taoiseach told RTÉ that using the social welfare system to tackle inflation is "one avenue we'll certainly be pursuing".
Mr Martin said there are “other mechanisms within the social welfare code that we could deploy” rather than increasing the base rate.
