Government’s one-off €35 COLA bonus cost over €7 million

A €35 bonus distributed by the government earlier this year to low-income workers cost the Treasury a total of €7,175,416.

The one-off bonus to pensioners, low-income workers and students was announced to make up for the miserly €0.58c cost of living adjustment (COLA) increase for 2015.

Responding to a parliamentary question by Labour Whip Godfrey Farrugia, social solidarity minister Michael Farrugia said that a whopping 226,899 people qualified for, and hence received the bonus cheque.  

He added that money spent on the bonus was forked out of the budgets for the Department for Social Security, Inland Revenue Department, Department for Education, and the Institute for Tourism Studies.

The one-off scheme had been dismissed by Opposition leader Simon Busuttil, who had said €35 is not even enough to cover a weekly trip to the grocery.