Sir, – While the Government is again considering cost-of-living top-ups, yet again there is no mention of measures for single person households.
Welfare recipients and those on a fixed income are understandably to be considered, as inflation is particularly tough on people in those situations. Talk of another double child benefit payment is also on the cards thus assuaging families who have recently had significant reductions in childcare costs.
Single person households are paying a proportionately higher amount of taxation on the same income. It costs the same to heat a one-person home as that of a family on less income. The same can be said of a mortgage or rent.
They face greater challenges securing accommodation, given that there is less income. Food inflation also hits them particularly hard as the set up in supermarkets is generally geared towards families.
Matt Williams: Take a deep breath and see how Sam Prendergast copes with big Fiji test
New Irish citizens: ‘I hear the racist and xenophobic slurs on the streets. Everything is blamed on immigrants’
Jack Reynor: ‘We were in two minds between eloping or going the whole hog but we got married in Wicklow with about 220 people’
‘I could have gone to California. At this rate, I probably would have raised about half a billion dollars’
When are we going to end this blatant discrimination? Single people vote too. – Yours, etc,
NIAMH BYRNE,
Fairview,
Dublin.