Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising those important issues. The fuel allowance for the over 70s is designed for a couple.

Issues around the community welfare service have been raised and I will update the committee in that regard.

The additional needs payment is the overarching term used to refer to exceptional and urgent needs. The purpose of these payments is to assist people with essential, once off, and exceptional expenditure, which a person could not reasonably be expected to meet out of their weekly income. Applications received for the additional needs payment have been in respect of food, heating, fuel, household bills, and household furniture. There is a load of different supports we can provide. In the case of an urgent or immediate need, with a request for items such as food or heating, every effort is made to ensure that assistance is provided on the same day. For the rest of the additional needs payments, applications of almost 70% are finalised within four weeks. Delays are generally due to additional information being required from the person to support their application. They might be asked to bring in that information and sometimes it just does not come in or it could take a while for them to come in with the information. My Department introduced a national community welfare service freephone line in June so that clients do not have to attend an office in person to make a claim. Where it appears that the customer's need is urgent, the query is referred to local community welfare services for immediate progression on the ground. In addition, an online claiming system is in development and should be available and in the first quarter of next year. The Deputy has raised with me whether we can put this online or on a phone app.

With regard to staffing, the are 412 people across all grades in the community welfare service. This includes staff in the community welfare service management support team, the support hub, the national rents team, the national community welfare service decisions team, as well as the 323 community welfare officers throughout the country. The Department has maintained staffing levels in the community welfare service nationwide in recent years during times when demand decreased, which is reflective of the commitment to continue to support the delivery of locally-based services to customers. The committee will be aware that we have advertised the service extensively because we want people to avail of this support service when they need it, but in light of the increased level of applications agreement has been reached with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform for approximately 74 additional staff to be assigned to the community welfare service. Recruitment has commenced for these staff and it is expected that the additional staff will be in place by the first quarter of 2023. In the interim, until the staff have been recruited, 30 social welfare inspectors have been temporarily reassigned to the community welfare service from this month, November, until February 2023 to assist with the claims process. We are redeploying resources into this area. Since 24 January 2022 community welfare officers have been physically on-site in all 51 Intreo centres across business hours. In other locations, and in non-Intreo locations where a community welfare officer is not on-site, one can be available to attend within one hour of an emergency presenting. As I have said, we have redeployed resources and we have extra staff for that particular area.

On the partial capacity benefit, the reason these people do not qualify for the disability support grant we paid is that they are working, but they will get the autumn bonus and they will get the Christmas bonus. They were not included in the that particular tranche. Also, it is a PRSI-based payment, as I understand it.

I was actually in contact with Ms Tracy McGinnis. I think of her as it comes to Christmas. It is not easy for her as she has lost her son. We are looking at that. Officials are looking at the options available there. They have still not come back to me. It was a difficult situation that she found herself in and we did not resolve it at the time but it is something we are examining.

I believe I have covered all of the questions there.