Leo Varadkar has said that he “does not accept” criticism that the Government is giving money to those "who don’t need it”.
The Tanaiste also said that taking €200 off people’s electricity bills again was “certainly an option”.
Varadkar said that he hears, but doesn’t agree with the sentiment that money was spent on those who didn’t need it amid the rising cost of living.
The Tanaiste said that everyone in Ireland was “feeling the squeeze” in terms of income and expenditure, and that a combination of measures were needed to help out. “Target measures” were needed in addition to that in order to “help those who are hurting the most”.
Speaking on RTE’s Today with Claire Byrne show, he told the host that those who needed the most assistance got two forms of benefit in recent months - €200 of their electricty bills as well as a fuel allowance payment - while those on higher incomes just got the one.
“I think that’s fair. Everyone is feeling the squeeze,” he said.
It comes following calls for targeted measures after the Economic and Social Research Institute’s report in mid-June showed that one in three Irish households were in energy poverty. Varadkar said that he disagreed that only targeted measures, and nothing else, should be used.
He told Claire Byrne: “There are people in Ireland who are on middle incomes. The average person in Ireland working full-time earns about €45,000 a year. If the ERSI and the Opposition are saying we shouldn’t help them, I disagree.”
In relation to his constituents, he said that there are people on “middle incomes, even good incomes on paper” but this is not the case when the cost of rent or mortgages, childcare and tax are taken into account.
“They can often be struggling to make ends meet as much as somebody on a low income. That’s my experience and that’s why I think we should have universal measures that benefit people on middle incomes, but those on the lowest incomes should get more. That’s the approach we’ve taken to date and we’ll follow,” he said.
The Tanaiste said on the radio show that giving people another €200 off their electricity bills was “certainly an option”.
He said: "It's a simple thing to do and if you give it to every household, it's a simple way of doing it.
"If you decide to have a means-tested system of some sort, that's very complicated (and) can be quite expensive to administer and can take a lot of time to do, whereas a discount is very straightforward."
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