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

Those 16,000 are paying PRSI. They are working people. From my experience, and I am sure the Deputy’s is the same, most of them want to work. If we can help them, we will. Language is a barrier for some of them but we are trying to overcome that with the classes that are being rolled out.

I will move on to the fuel allowance. I expanded the fuel allowance last year, as the Deputy knows. When trying to estimate how many were going to take it up, we thought there would be more. We are currently advertising it to make sure everybody is taking it up. I take the Deputy’s point about the humanitarian scheme, which we discussed earlier. We have a sliding scale for that whereby if people go over the limit, they get a bit less for every percentage point they go over it by. I think that is something we should consider, to be honest. There are many older people out there and the Deputy and I know that they like to have the few bob saved in case they need it. They are probably scrimping a bit and turn off the heat sooner than they need to because they just do not want to spend their savings. It is just something that happens as people get older. It is a good idea and perhaps we should look at it in the context of the next budget with regard to how we might slide the scale.

The new group are the over-70s. They do not have to be on a social welfare payment once the joint income is €1,000 or less per week, which is very generous. That is where the savings came in. As I said, we are advertising again. I am happy to look at that because the Deputy makes a good point in this regard.

The humanitarian aid scheme is a good one. The income limits were a fair bit lower so I have brought them up. It was at €30,000 for a single person and I brought that up to €50,000; it was €70,000 for a couple and I brought that up to €90,000; and I increased it from €10,000 to €15,000 for every dependent child. A good few people are able to avail of it. It is for people who do not have insurance, that is, those who were not able to get insurance as opposed to those who did not take out insurance.

It is working well. That scheme needs to stay there because our climate is changing and we find that, unfortunately, there are more incidents like the ones we have seen in Cork, Galway and County Louth and we need to be able to support people. It is an awful thing to walk through a house and see the damage. I do not have to tell anyone here because we have all seen it.