ALONE says once off payments keep poverty levels lower for older people living alone
45% of older people living alone would be in poverty without the once-off cost of living payments.
ALONE says once off payments keep poverty levels lower for older people living alone.
45% of older people living alone would be in poverty without the once-off cost of living payments.
Dublin May 16th: ALONE, the organisation that supports people to age at home, today said that discussion around scrapping once off payments is ill-informed and can cause needless stress for those older people living near poverty. ALONE calls for delivery of targeted support that goes beyond a person’s age and addresses actual hardship and the effects of hardship; something that has proven difficult to achieve so far.
The organisation supported over 43,000 older people last year, of which 1 in 3 , newly assessed people came to ALONE expressing financial concerns in 2024, following a steady increase throughout the year from 27% in Q1 to 32% in Q4. This trend continues into 2025, with people coming to ALONE with benefit problems, entitlements and struggling just to make ends meet.
ALONE is calling for the pension to be benchmarked at 34% of the average industrial wage, and the Living Alone Allowance increased, to take the uncertainty out of older people’s financial security in the face of higher costs for food, heating and utilities. A commitment that was written into the ‘Road Map for Social Inclusion 2020-2025’ but not delivered by the last government.
ALONE CEO Seán Moynihan said: “One-off payments are being discussed but not their impact, the government’s own CSO/SILC data showed how they reduced poverty last year. The discussion needs to be about our ability to deliver targeted supports. Older people contribute to our society all their lives, and these payments have eliminated poverty while prices and costs spiral. Any conversation about simply stopping them causes hardship for those older people living on a state pension and exposed to one large bill pushing them under”.
Recent CSO/SILC figures show that the risk of poverty rate was highest in households comprising one adult aged 65 or over, at 25.9%, a significant increase from 2023, when the figure stood at 15.4%. But the figures also reveal that, without cost-of-living measures, 45.6% of older people living alone would have been in poverty.
While the rate of inflation eased in 2025, prices have not gone down.
In January 2025, butter rose by 55 cents to €4.31 per pound compared to January 2024, while Irish cheddar saw a 35-cent increase. Two litres of full-fat milk also went up by 18 cents. The high cost of household staples is increasingly unsustainable for older people living alone.
Moynihan concluded: “There are lots of financial problems landing on older people, particularly those living alone, but benchmarking the state pension would go a long way towards allowing those under pressure to live as part of an inclusive society, where they can afford to eat and heat their homes and not have to choose between those essentials of life”.
