Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for the report. Regarding the exceptional needs payment, does she have a statistic for the number of people who have been rejected by the community welfare officer for a payment? What proportion of people are successful in getting an exceptional needs payment and what proportion have been rejected? Second, why is there no appeals process directly to the community welfare officer on a rejection? One has to go to another department to appeal it. It appears to be the only payment that does not have an appeals process.

The second issue is the return to signing on at post offices. I am looking at a newspaper headline that I find extremely objectionable, "Return to 'signing on' at post offices to reduce welfare fraud". The article quotes the Minister in this regard, saying that one of reasons was to increase footfall in the post offices and the other was to reduce fraud. Are there any other circumstances where people are getting payments from the State where the reason the payments have been brought back to a physical premises is on the basis of fraud?