Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The drafts of the Bill, which is the miscellaneous Bill and not the convention, include a head that includes the avoidance of overlapping of benefits. What we are doing is maintaining the current rights. Obviously, what we want to do is to try to avoid the situation we had a while ago. That ambiguity arose because there was no legislation that prescribed anything in law. One of the heads of the Bill that will be published tomorrow will detail how we intend to avoid it but that does not mean that it necessarily will not be open to challenge. We are prepared and we hope that we will be able to prescribe in law that someone cannot avail of something in both scenarios. Obviously, we want to maintain what we have in this instance and, in essence, this is about trying to perfect what we thought we had before it was undermined by the European Court of Justice ruling regarding jurisdiction rights of people in the UK and Ireland to apply for each other's fuel payments a number of years ago. The draft head will include a motion of avoidance of overlapping benefits but we will maintain the current arrangements and are not changing the rules for anything else.