Mr. Ger Deering:

I thank the Deputy. I will deal with one or two of her questions and then hand over to Ms Hanrahan on the HAP discretionary payment and various reports.

On social protection, there is no particular trend. The report covers one of the pandemic periods. There were complaints about access to some of those schemes. I am pleased to say that the number of complaints about the Department of Social Protection has been dropping. It is one of the organisations that works well with us. Some of the outcomes are extremely important. For example, a particular complainant came to us who had been in receipt of carer's allowance. Her entitlement to that payment ended and for a number of years she continued to be in receipt of it. The Department sought about €13,000 in arrears of payments that were due. When our investigation examined the case, we discovered that she should have moved from carer's allowance to a disability allowance. The difference was perhaps €13,000 or €15,000. The point was that the person was in a much better position than she had been.

We get a lot of co-operation when we engage with the Department of Social Protection. It is fair to say that it is not one particular scheme that is an issue. The number of complaints is not high, given that every week the Department of Social Protection pays out huge amounts of money to a significant number of people. The number of cases is not disproportionate, if I was to put it that way.