Social welfare group can claim summer lump sum worth at least €160
Thousands of social welfare recipients may be in line for a welcome financial boost this summer, with a Government payout worth at least €160 available.
The Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance (BSCFA) is returning again this year to help cover the growing cost of uniforms and shoes ahead of the new school term.
This once-yearly lump sum is designed to ease the burden on parents and guardians as they prepare their children for the classroom - but changes to how it's usually issued mean some people who previously qualified automatically may now need to apply manually.
The allowance ranges from €160 to €285 per child, depending on their age, and is available to eligible families receiving social welfare payments or participating in approved employment or education schemes. With applications opening in June, it's important for parents and guardians to check their eligibility now to avoid missing out.
There are two aged-based payment levels for children under the BSCFA lump sum scheme.
Parents or guardians of children aged between four and 11 (as of September 30,2025) may be entitled to €160 per child.
Parents or guardians of children aged between 12 and 22 (as of September 30, 2025) may receive a higher payment of €285 per child, as long as the child is returning to full-time, second-level education in the autumn.
Children must be resident in Ireland, and you must also be living in the State and receiving a qualifying social welfare payment or participating in an approved training or employment scheme. Your household income must also fall within specific limits, and in most cases, you must be receiving a Child Support Payment (formerly called Increase for a Qualified Child or IQC) with your primary welfare payment.
In some cases, you'll be paid automatically. If the Department of Social Protection (DSP) determines you qualify based on your current circumstances, you'll receive a notification via your MyWelfare account or by post.
However, not everyone will be included automatically this year, particularly parents of older children aged 18 to 22. If your child is in this age group, you may be required to provide evidence that they are returning to full-time, second-level education in a recognised school or college.
If you haven't received a letter or message from the DSP by the end of June, you must apply online via MyWelfare, even if you received the payment last year.
If you receive a qualifying social welfare payment but don't receive a child support payment, you may still be eligible for BSCFA if the rules of your primary payment do not include child support (eg maternity benefit or adoptive benefit), or if you're partner's income exceeds the threshold for your main payment, but your total household income is still within the BSCFA limits.
Foster children do not qualify for the BSCFA. That's because foster carers receive a separate Foster Care Allowance, which already includes support for clothing and footwear expenses.
Applications for the 2025 BSCFA season are expected to open in June. If you're not automatically contacted by the DSP, it's your responsibility to submit an application online.
For more information and to check detailed eligibility rules, see the Citizen's Information page here or log in to your MyWelfare account.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
44 minutes ago
- Irish Times
Families paying highest childcare costs to benefit from cap in September
Families paying some of the country's highest childcare fees will see costs reduced in September after the Department of Children confirmed new caps on what providers can charge. The new ceilings should mean no parents pay more than €295 per week for a child attending a service participating in the Government's Core Funding scheme for between 40 and 50 hours a week. That figure will, in most cases, reduce to €198.70 after other supports are factored in. The caps vary according to the number of hours involved. The reductions, however, will only affect those parents whose children attend the most expensive services in receipt of Core Funding, with about 10 per cent of the almost 4,500 Government-supported providers charging at least one type of fee that will have to be reduced. In many cases, however, the savings should amount to more than €100 per child per month. READ MORE The imposition of fee caps from September on service providers in receipt of Core Funding had been scheduled for some time, but they had only previously applied to services that signed up to Core Funding for the first time. The department said on Thursday that the new caps would bring the gross fees paid by parents at more expensive services closer to the national average cost of €197 per week. At the announcement, Minister for Children Norma Foley acknowledged the Government still has considerable ground to cover to honour commitments that costs to parents will be cut to €200 per month. She said this would be done during the life of the Government, but said it was too early to indicate what scale of reductions might be funded in this year's budget. The childcare sector funding year runs from September to August and most of the big funding changes set to take effect later this year were announced before the current Government was elected. 'The programme for government has a very clear commitment around the €200 and that is our absolute goal,' she said. 'I've been very clear that we will do that over the lifetime of this Government. It will be incremental, and we're starting at the very top where there are extraordinarily high costs to parents, and we're beginning to bring that down.' Ms Foley said Core Funding would increase from €331 million in the current year to at least €350 million in the year from September with up to €45 million in additional funding to support pay in the sector which is widely seen as a barrier to the provision of additional places and services due to the difficulty in attracting and retaining staff. Minimum rates in the sector are only fractionally above the minimum wage. Talks between employer groups and unions on a new sector-wide agreement on minimum rates are ongoing and while progress is said to have been made, it is not clear that any new deal would be in place by September. If it is not, or the increases agreed are too small, some of the €45 million will be retained by the department. 'This funding is welcome, but the scale of it has to be reflected in the pay of staff in the sector,' said Darragh O'Connor of Siptu. 'Otherwise, it will be impossible for anyone to go back and make the case for similar supports in future years.' Karen Clince, chief executive at one of the country's largest providers, Tigers, welcomed the increased levels of Core Funding to be provided. But she said 'it doesn't go nearly far enough to address the horrific staffing we find ourselves in. We need more focus on pay and conditions rather than just vote-winning affordability.'
Dublin Live
3 hours ago
- Dublin Live
Social welfare applications open for lump sum payment available to thousands of households
Our community members are treated to special offers, promotions and adverts from us and our partners. You can check out at any time. More info Applications have opened for a lump sum payment available to thousands of households. The Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance (BSCFA) is a scheme that assists parents with the cost of school uniforms and shoes. Many families will receive the payment automatically but applications are now open if you don't automatically qualify. If you are paid automatically, you don't need to apply for the scheme. You should have been notified on your MyWelfare account or by post by June 4, 2025. If you were not notified June 4, you will need to apply for the BSCFA. Applications opened on Wednesday and will close on September 30. The current rate of payment is €160 for children aged between four and 11, and €285 for children aged 12-22. Children aged between 18-22 must be returning to full-time second-level education in a recognised school in the autumn of 2025 in order to qualify. Join our Dublin Live breaking news service on WhatsApp. Click this link to receive your daily dose of Dublin Live content. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. For all the latest news from Dublin and surrounding areas visit our homepage.
Irish Times
14 hours ago
- Irish Times
Ireland is like the paradox of Schrödinger's cat: a wet country that has too little water
Debates about whether we need 50,000 new houses a year, as the Government says, or 93,000, as some analysts say, are arguably pointless: neither total is possible as there simply isn't the water there to supply them, or to process their waste. Just 30,000 to 35,000 new houses can be supplied each year for the foreseeable future according to Uisce Éireann . Quite the gap. In 2013, Irish Water – as it was called – inherited a severely neglected water infrastructure system. The average age of a water pipe is about 75 years – double the European average – and leaky as a Government backbencher. At about 37 per cent, our water leakage levels are among the highest in western Europe due to these ageing underground pipes and a legacy of fragmented ownership of the network with historically variable levels of maintenance. Tralee alone loses 6.5 million litres a day in leaks, enough water for a town twice its size. Ireland also uses a lot of water compared to the rest of Europe, 1.7 billion litres daily, with domestic usage accounting for two-thirds of this and non-domestic consumers the balance. Uisce Éireann is expecting non-domestic demand in the Greater Dublin Area (GDA) to increase by 67 per cent by 2040. READ MORE As in housing, geography matters. While the west and south of the country has more rainfall and better water supplies, it is in the east of the country that demand is intensifying, exactly where rainfall is lower and river systems are smaller. About 80 per cent of our drinking water comes from rivers and lakes with the remainder from groundwater, mostly in rural areas. The GDA, with 40 per cent of the country's population, relies heavily on Vartry reservoir and the Liffey, the latter of which supplies 85 per cent of Dublin city's water. Such a narrow base of water supply means systemic vulnerability in case of drought or peak demand. At the same time, population growth means that domestic water demand across the country will increase by 26 per cent to 2044. [ Fixing 'known' water system issues will take until 2050 and cost up to €60bn, says Uisce Éireann ] In the east, the demand for drinking water will increase by 45 per cent to 800 million litres a day in the GDA by 2040, vastly exceeding current capacity. Two-thirds of towns and villages do not have the 'infrastructural headroom' to support new development without upgrades, which is essential for rural revitalisation. We also need to deal with wastewater. More than half of our wastewater treatment plants are not always compliant with their licences, and Ireland has been in continuous breach of various parts of the EU Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive for more than 30 years. In rural areas, more than half the septic tanks inspected last year failed. Just 1,390 of nearly 500,000 were tested, meaning significant risks for surface and groundwater quality. Various studies have noted evidence of faecal contamination in rural wells. There are solutions, the quickest of which is to change usage behaviour and the quickest way to do that is to charge for water. That didn't go down well the last time it was tried. Tánaiste Simon Harris recently promised the Government will not introduce water charges, although he also promised we'd complete 40,000 houses last year. The actual number of new homes completed was 30,330. There is a plan to charge for 'excess' water and wastewater usage (above 213,000 litres per average household annually), but there's no timeline or legislation yet for its introduction. Behavioural interventions like awareness campaigns are also useful: more nudge, less sludge. Better planning decisions about where new housing is allowed to integrate water supply and output also have a role. Rainwater and downpipe harvesting should be part of every new house. Fixing leaks and upgrading existing infrastructure are, however, key. Uisce Éireann spends €250 million a year reducing leaks from 46 per cent in 2018 and is aiming for 25 per cent by 2030. The proposed 170km Shannon pipeline to serve the east and midlands will take 350 million litres a day from the Parteen Basin near Birdhill, Co Tipperary. Without this pipeline, there will be no new housing or commercial water connections in the GDA, which will have significant implications for the national economy, the delivery of housing, social equality and sustainable patterns of development. [ Renters forking out €2,000 per month are paying the price for water charges debacle ] This will cost money, which goes to the heart of the issue: successive governments, all of which contained parties of the current Government, have repeatedly underfunded water infrastructure, exactly as they have housing, in both instances expecting the private sector to do the heavy lifting for them. Whereas expensive and volatile private sector reliance has grown exponentially in housing, no private sector involvement in water infrastructure has happened. Maybe no harm. Across the Irish Sea, privatisation of water in England has led to increased shareholder profits and directors' remuneration, and worse leakage and poorer quality water. In housing, ministers castigate local authorities for not doing enough at the same time as cutting funding. In water, there are announcements of increased funding, but as in housing, this is not always new funding, but recycled old funding. Indeed, Uisce Éireann's chairman recently accused the Government of allowing misleading messages of additional funding to permeate ' within Government circles, industry and the general public ', even though there was no additional funding (while politicians simultaneously blame Uisce Éireann for shortages). Pretend money – particularly annually allocated pretend money – won't solve our water supply issue. A wealthy but still penny-wise pound-foolish Government hasn't made the link between functioning infrastructure and housing output, and indeed climate. As a result, Ireland is now the geographical manifestation of Schrödinger's cat: a wet country that is at the same time lacking in water for new housing; a country with numerous energy-hungry data centres, but also a looming potential shortage of electricity for new houses; and more than 15,500 homeless in a country with over 160,000 vacant homes. You'd have to wonder whether anyone is in charge. Dr Lorcan Sirr is senior lecturer in housing at the Technological University Dublin
