Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister can include this information in her reply.

The Estimate figure for the community employment scheme shows an overspend of approximately 6.35% despite the budgetary adjustments made last year. What happened? Cutbacks which were hotly debated in the House and elsewhere were made last year. Nonetheless, expenditure has overshot. Will the Minister comment on this?

The target for the back to education allowance scheme was overshot by 8.5%, despite the downward adjustments made last year. A significant number over and above what had been anticipated applied for the allowance.

Family income supplement is a payment to assist people on low incomes. It is often very badly needed to enable people to get from one end of the week to the other. Those who apply for it must wait for approximately 38 weeks or nine months, which is far too long. Will the Minister clarify whether persons waiting for the supplement to come through are entitled to claim basic supplementary welfare allowance?

I have not encountered any such people yet. One is not covered by the allowance, as one is employed and one's income is too low. Something must be done to accelerate the application process for the family income supplement, FIS.

We are discussing the working poor, those who would sometimes be better off if they were on social welfare. They are trying to make a contribution and the State recognises that their incomes are insufficient to keep body and soul together, yet they must wait nine months for the FIS. What are they supposed to do in the meantime?

If someone is assessed as being entitled to a certain amount of FIS, it remains fixed for 12 months. Circumstances can change dramatically. I am dealing with a case of a married couple in which the man is in a low income job and the woman is in receipt of illness benefit. Their FIS was assessed as being X amount approximately one week ago, but the assessment took into account the illness benefit, which is due to expire in a couple of weeks time. They will be stuck with an artificially low rate of FIS for 12 months, yet the Department tells me that nothing can be done. It seems unjust.

As the Minister will be aware, there was a statutory regulation on the mortgage interest supplement last year. My understanding of the current position is that people do not qualify for the supplement until they have managed to make a repayment agreement with the bank and that agreement has been in place for 12 months. Is this correct?

Regarding the overall household benefits package, the electricity allowance from the Social Insurance Fund seems to have overshot by 20.2%. Is this due to increased energy costs? I presume so.

Concerning employment assistance schemes, etc., there was an underspend of 22% on community work placements under the Tús scheme. There are only 1,208 people on the jobs initiative. There has been an unanticipated undershoot of 7.9% in expenditure on the back to work allowance. Even on the JobBridge scheme expenditure has been 17% less than anticipated. At a time when there is significant emigration and the unemployment rate consistently touches 15%, I would have expected these schemes to be considerably oversubscribed. Is there a difficulty? Obviously, each scheme has its merits, but why can we not fill them? It seems somewhat perverse, given the circumstances in terms of unemployment. For the same reasons, the underspend of 9.1% on the working age employment supports is remarkable.

The reduction in the free fuel allowance was 3.8%. I presume that the Government budgeted for a greater reduction, given last year's decrease in the period from 32 weeks to 26 weeks. The saving in the part from the Social Insurance Fund was €5.5 million, but I expected a greater one as a result of last year's dramatic cutback.

We are not opposing this Supplementary Estimate. We are all desirous that the people who are forced to rely on social welfare should be properly looked after.