The social protection minister has said it would not have been fair to give pensioners another increase this year and give nothing to other welfare recipients. 

Leo Varadkar says he simply did not have the €90m needed to pay the increase from January 1. 

Instead all weekly welfare payments will go up by €5 a week from March. 

Minister Varadkar has said he wanted this to be fair:  “As that was being discussed over the summer, and August in particular, and when I started discussing the Budget with Paschal Donohoe, we both very quickly came to the conclusion that we couldn’t have another increase for pensioners, two increases in a row and once again do nothing at all for all these other groups, these 850,000 people.”