The payments, which will be issued from today, will be given to long-term social welfare recipients including pensioners, carers, lone parents and people with disabilities.<\/p>\n
Other examples of recipients include those receiving back to education allowance, farm assist, illness benefit and jobseeker\u2019s allowance for 12 months. <\/p>\n
Payments totalling \u20ac370 million will be issued from today, with people receiving their Christmas bonus on the same day that they usually receive their primary payment.<\/p>\n
The minimum bonus amount that will be paid is \u20ac20.<\/p>\n
If you are receiving two eligible social welfare payments (for example, a One-Parent Family Payment and the Domiciliary Care Allowance or a half-rate Carer\u2019s Allowance as well as your primary payment) you will get the Christmas Bonus for both payments.<\/p>\n
For Domiciliary Care Allowance, which is paid monthly, the bonus is 100% of the weekly rate.<\/p>\n
Minister Calleary said: \u201cI am very conscious of the pressure families are under particularly in the run up to Christmas.<\/p>\n
“The Christmas bonus is a vital support, particularly for our senior citizens.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why I am pleased to announce the details of the Christmas bonus payments today.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs always, I would encourage people, where possible, to shop locally in the run-up to Christmas this year. By shopping locally, you are supporting your local economy, your local community and your local small businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n
The counties that are expected to have highest numbers of recipients include: Dublin as over 348,000 people, Cork at just over 159,100, Galway at nearly 73,000 and Limerick at 64,300. <\/p>\n
From January, the maximum rate of most weekly social welfare payments will increase by \u20ac10. There will be proportional increases for qualified adults and people on reduced rates of payment.<\/p>\n
The Child Support Payment will increase by \u20ac8, from \u20ac50 to \u20ac58, for children under 12 years of age.<\/p>\n
And by \u20ac16, from \u20ac62 to \u20ac78, for children aged 12 years and over<\/p>\n
Also from January, the fuel allowance will increase by \u20ac5 to \u20ac38 per week. <\/p>\n
Also those who qualify for the working family payment will receive the fuel allowance in March, back dated to January. <\/p>\n
To find out more about the Christmas bonuses and to see the full list of qualifying payments see gov.ie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The payments, which will be issued from today, will be given to long-term social welfare recipients including pensioners,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,898,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-168652","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-latest-news-ticker","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}