The Dáil has passed all stages of the Social Welfare Bill.
The Government had comfortable majorities - 80 to 76 and 80 to 75 - in two votes called by the Opposition.
The Bill, which gives effect to the social welfare cuts in the budget, now goes to the Seanad.
Earlier Minister for Social Protection Eamon Ó Cuív today defended planned cuts to welfare payments, including the pension paid to blind and visually impaired people ahead of this afternoon's vote.
Mr Ó Cuív said it was “very hard to make cuts to social welfare in any form”.
Last year’s budget was €20.9 billion, while this year’s was less at €20.62 billion. There was a “saving” of some €872 million to be made.
Speaking on RTE's Morning Ireland, Mr O Cuív rejected the suggestion put to him that the State pension had been left untouched because older people represented a powerful lobby.
He said the number of pensioners was increasing all the time.
“The issue in relation to the State pension was that it was decided to leave everybody, no matter what payment they were getting, over 66 years of age, untouched.”
The basis for that was that people over that age had no capacity whatsoever to earn an income.
In framing the Budget measures, he had tried to make as many savings as possible through control savings, such as elimination of fraud. This would be aided by the new public services card to be introduced next year.
But the Minister said “at the end of the day”, some €533 million in savings had to be made through cutting payment rates.
He said the Government had looked at the issue “every way” and he had “huge sympathy”, particularly for people with disabilities and for carers.
Some 1,500 people were in receipt of a blind pension. It would not be right to separate out one disability when there might be people with multiple disabilities, or people who were even more severely disabled but who happened to have their eyesight.
Mr Ó Cuív said he had recently introduced three measures as part of moves to “radically reform” the social welfare system. The Social Welfare Bill would also differentiate between “levels of ability to work” when it came to payment of disability allowances.
Defending cuts to the carer’s allowance, the Minister said expenditure in this area had increased by “600 per cent in 10 years”. A universal respite grant for carers of €1,700 per annum would also remain untouched, and the means test had been widened to allow carers or their spouses continue earning an income.
Mr Ó Cuív said the rate of carer’s allowance was €204, compared to €188 for jobseeker’s allowance.
There were still about 300,000 people receiving welfare payments when carers, widows and those on disability were taken out of the calculation.
To make up the savings, the Government would have had to increase the cut to jobseekers’ allowance by about another €3 which would have had the effect of bringing income for a couple on jobseeker’s allowance down by €19.
The Minister accepted that some wealthy people would be better off due to changes being made in the budget.
But there had been “huge reform” of the way wealthy people could shelter their money using pension payments.
One of the “crinkles” in the old system was that a self-employed person paid 3 per cent of their income without limit on PRSI, while an employed person didn’t pay it over €75,000.
This meant people on similar incomes were paying different rates of PRSI.
He said one of the problems with reform was that in undoing “crinkles” in the system, “it appears that you are not being ultimately fair”.
Now, everybody would pay 4 per cent of their income in a social contribution, which would make it much easier “to make balance adjustments without the anomalies of the past”.
Fine Gael spokesman Michael Ring had called on TDs to vote with their conscience and to reject the measures proposed in the Social Welfare Bill, which many groups have said will have a severe impact on those on lower incomes.
The Labour Party's social and family affairs spokeswoman Roisin Shortall today described the Budget as “vicious” and said it would have a devastating impact on those who are reliant on help from the State.
She claimed the reduction in social welfare rates would push more individuals into the arms of moneylenders.
Ms Shortall described the €1 reduction in the minimum wage as “absolutely reprehensible”, and said the new universal social charge was in effect a new tax on individuals which benefited the wealthy but hurt those on the lowest levels of income.