Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has said that the last minute increase to the Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance, by outgoing Minister Leo Varadkar, was\u00a0delivered in a half-hearted and in a reluctant manner.<\/p>\n
The Sinn F\u00e9in TD said the 25% increase while welcome will still leave many families with a financial mountain climb.<\/p>\n
Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe back to school period is a financial nightmare for many families and particularly those currently relying on Social Welfare payments.<\/p>\n
\u201cSchool costs like many other essentials cannot be ignored or wished away, and increasingly more and more families are having to dig deep to meet rising costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeveral surveys conducted by various organisations have put actual costs at between \u20ac800 and in some cases, over \u20ac1,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cTypically, any increase in a payment such as the Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance is welcome, but the gap between the payment and the actual cost of sending a child to school is still growing.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack to school costs are increasing year on year and a payment of \u20ac125 and \u20ac250 while extremely welcome, comes nowhere near to meeting the actual costs of sending a child to school and still leaves families with a huge financial mountain to climb at this time of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cSadly this payment\u00a0increase appears to have been delivered in a half-hearted and reluctant manner.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeo Varadkar, the outgoing Minister for Social Protection and now Taoiseach, on numerous previous occasions resisted calls to increase this payment and even went as far as to suggest that the payment at its previous level was sufficient as costs were supposedly falling. Clearly common sense and saner heads have prevailed and the increase payment was signed off on.<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday, St. Vincent de Paul launched their Pre Budget Submission and this calls for the restoration of this payment to its former 2011 levels of \u20ac305 for children over 12 and \u20ac200 for children under 12. This is clearly the direction we need to go in and with the right political will can be achieved in Budget 2018.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has said that the last minute increase to the Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance, by outgoing Minister Leo Varadkar, was\u00a0delivered in a half-hearted and in a reluctant manner. The Sinn F\u00e9in TD said the 25% increase while welcome will still leave many families with a financial mountain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[191,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-back-to-school","category-social-protection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3156,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155\/revisions\/3156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}