The Christmas bonus will be paid this week to recipients of a long-term Social Welfare payment, including pensioners, people with disabilities, carers, lone parents and long-term jobseekers in recognition of the position of vulnerable households. Other groups to benefit are people in receipt of the Back to Work Allowance, Community Employment, Job Initiative, Rural Social Scheme, Tús, and Gateway.
Fine Gael TD for Limerick has said that the reintroduction of the Christmas Bonus this week is good news for people across Limerick. He said that the a Government had made the decision to restore the Christmas Bonus in the recent Budget to recognise the contribution that so many people, especially the elderly, had made to the National Recovery.
Patrick O’Donovan said that the bonus was being partially restored because the country’s finances were gradually beginning to recover and that while the Government had started with one quarter of the payment, he hoped to see the remainder of the payment restored in the coming budgets. Patrick O’Donovan added that in relation to the increase in the Living Alone Allowance, while the increase was small it was the first increase since 1996; it had not been touched during the years of the Celtic Tiger despite the cost of living has been rising sharply.