Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik has called on the Government to include an emergency cost-of-living package in the upcoming Budget.
Speaking during Leaders Questions, Ms Bacik said Government has shown no indication that they will use the €9.4bn Budget package to bring "struggling families any meaningful respite".
She called for targeted energy credits to be reinstated, an extension of the ban on families being disconnected from the network, and a second targeted rate of child benefit in the upcoming Budget.
Ms Bacik also called for the permanent abolition of the means test for the carer's allowance and a "meaningful" cost-of-disability payment.
"Ireland is a rich country, but for far too many people, it feels poor. Despite high GDP, child poverty rates now match those experienced by families after Fianna Fáil crashed the economy in 2007.
"This crisis is really hurting children, children more than anyone," she said.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the Budget will prioritise tackling the issue of child poverty and those most in need.
He said that the "most effective intervention" in terms of poverty and living standards was work and jobs, adding that employment has risen by 506,000 since 2019.
Mr Martin said inflation has considerably eased since Covid-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and living standards have improved significantly with wages increasing by up to 3.5% this year alone.
He said the Government will include targeted resources as opposed to universal allocations in the Budget.
"We want to do it in a mainstream way. It’s not economically stable as we come out of this high inflation period of the last two or three years after Covid that we continue to do large, standalone cost-of-living packages,
"We have to mainstream provision in terms of the various mechanisms that we have," he said.
