Mr. John McKeon:

In respect of jobseeker's payment, a person gets an increase for it if they already have a qualified child. An element of the payment referred to by the Senator in terms of lone parents and jobseekers already reflects the fact that a person is minding a child. If the person is then getting a payment from elsewhere to cover some of the costs of minding that child, it is appropriate for us to take account of that payment in assessing it for means. If someone is in receipt of a widow's pension, which does not take account of the fact that they are guarding a child who is not their own, receipt of a payment for that guardian should not affect the person's widow's payment. They are the two examples. That is the difference.

Deputy O'Dea asked a question about the recovery of supplementary welfare allowance and how those people will qualify for disability allowance in any event. It does not always happen. In order to be on disability allowance, a person must be pretty much disabled for at least 12 months. There are people who receive personal injury awards where it might be a six, eight or nine-month period and they would not be eligible for disability allowance in that situation. That is what it is to provide for.

In the context of an appeal on an automated decision, I agree that it is quite strange, particularly when one considers why somebody would appeal a positive decision. The reason we have that provision is because we are very conscious that the general data protection regulation, which comes into force next year, only allows automated decisions if there is an appeals process and does not distinguish between whether the automated decision is positive or negative. A public authority can only implement an automated decision process if there is an appeals process against that in legislation, so we are doing it to comply with the general data protection regulation.

The issue relating to head 7 is that it will not necessarily result in reduced fees. At the moment, because the General Register Office was previously the responsibility of the Minister for Health and is now the responsibility of the Minister for Social Protection, there is provision in two different Acts for the setting of reduced fees. We are just trying to clarify that it is the Minister for Social Protection who has the power to set reduced fees. The Minister has no intention of increasing fees. It is just about cleaning up the legislation so that rather than having two Ministers with power to set reduced fees, just one will have that power. That is the sole purpose of it. I will ask Ms Stack to address the questions regarding heads 4 and 5.