Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I could see the Senator throughout his contribution. I thank him for opening with the remark about the staff and I echo it. The Department and the staff have not only been on the front line throughout the pandemic but adapted extraordinarily quickly and dealt with an extraordinary volume of applications. The difficulty of that cannot be overstated, so I appreciate the Senator acknowledging that.

On the national childcare scheme, I can give the Senator some statistics but if he wants to clarify what information he is seeking, I can revert to him with it. A total of 92,000 active applications have been submitted, comprising 57,000 income-assessed applications relating to 67,000 children and 34,000 universal applications relating to 36,000 children. About 3,000 providers have been contracted to provide the national childcare scheme. I have some further information on it to hand but if the Senator wishes to ask a follow-up question, I will see whether I have what he seeks rather than read through all the information front of me.

On the one-stop shop for bereavement supports, if I recall correctly, the Senator's colleague has raised the issue in the Dáil with the Minister, Deputy Humphreys. I will check with her and get an answer for the Senator.

I will take away the Senator's point on the carer's allowance and the means test not having been updated since 2008.

On food poverty and the meals on wheels campaign, that too is something I will take on board. To backtrack a little to my earlier point about writing to the various Departments to see what they are doing in this area, I envisage and hope that out of that we will develop some kind of a working group. I hope the Department of Health might be involved in that, although I do not want to pre-empt anything, given that the request has not yet been made. It is at such a forum that I can bring the specific issue of the funding for meals on wheels that the Senator raised.

I thank the Senator for mentioning SICAP. We do not speak enough about it but brilliant work is being done throughout the country. We are at very early stages of thinking about what the new SICAP might look like but there will be a consultation process on that. It is something I am personally eager to develop because SICAP has a very significant impact on communities throughout the country and it is important we get the next iteration of it right. There have been some calls for the current SICAP to be extended because of Covid and we are examining whether that is an option.

My understanding is that RAPID areas no longer exist in many respects and that they have been replaced to a great extent by the Pobal deprivation index, which is much more detailed in terms of the data used to assess deprivation. The community enhancement programme has replaced RAPID areas. The programme grants sums of money annually to local community development committees, which are on the ground and know best where to direct the money. The committees grant the funding to local groups and to the need as they see it.

On the CE schemes and the age group the Senator mentioned, there is the service support stream as well, which can offer options to people in that age group to allow them to continue working to pension age. My latest update on that was that that allocation for the service support stream places, which allows people to reach pension age, was not fully used, nationally at least.

It can be at local level but there is some scope to trade the allocation, within regions at least. I am putting on the Senator's radar that the service support stream might be an option for some of the people he mentioned. I have touched on most of his points but does he want to come back to me on any of them?