“We’re giving child benefit to families on high wages, people on €100,000 a year. It’s like a subsidy for them to have sex.”
A Fine Gael Councillor has said that paying child benefits to all parents, regardless of their income, is a “subsidy for them to have sex”.
South Dublin County Councillor David McManus said that Ireland is currently paying €140 a month child benefit payments to all families, including high earners.
McManus added that he believes that these social welfare payments should be limited to "those who need it".
“When money is scarce, my view is, you give it to those who most need it,” he said on Local Voices, a podcast from Dublin newspaper, The Echo.
“Child benefit goes to every child in the country, we’re giving child benefit to families on high wages, people on €100,000 a year. It’s like a subsidy for them to have sex.”
McManus also spoke about a hot meal programme which recently meant one out of four interested schools in the Tallaght area were ruled out of a scheme that would offer free hot lunches to school children.
The school was ruled out in spite of being on the same premises as one of the schools which were allocated a place in the scheme as the allocations were made on a lottery based system.
McManus said that the hot meals programme should be given to "all disadvantaged schools that need it", but not all schools in general.
“I would say hot meals for schools should be there for all Deis schools and all disadvantaged schools that need it,” he added.
“I don’t think it would be proper to say, ‘We are going to give this to every school in the country’."
