Mr. R?n?n Hession:

I thank the Deputy for the question. I thank the Deputy for his comments on Liam Daly. I will pass them on to him. Mr. Daly will be glad to know that the person felt well looked after.

I have just asked my colleague to check the figures that were queried. I am happy to follow up the point with the SEAI. It is my understanding that while invalidity pension is not a qualifying scheme for the warmer homes scheme, the fuel allowance is. Invalidity pension is a qualifying scheme for fuel allowance. There are approximately 16,000 people with the invalidity pension who are in receipt of the fuel allowance. I am not overly familiar with the warmer homes scheme but I would have thought that if those 16,000 people are getting fuel allowance, they would get in. On the balance, off the top of my head I believe the figure for invalidity pension is about 70,000, so it is a subset of those. We are happy to clarify that for the committee. Maybe that cohort might transfer across.

On the Irish Cancer Society, I do not know if this issue has been raised prior to the recent report on the household benefits package or whether this is in the context of pre-budget. The household benefits package is a secondary payment where it is a top up where there is an underlying qualifying payment. Certainly if people with cancer are on a disability allowance or invalidity pension, since about 2018 - which is when we first started tagging schemes by the actual underlying condition - there are approximately 5,000 people with cancer and who have disability allowance have come onto those schemes and some 15,000 who are on the invalidity pension. That is around 20,000 people who are on those schemes who have the household benefits package but it is not an automatic entitlement. That is the long and short of it. The underlying qualifying schemes are intended to try to capture those with long-term illnesses or disabilities.

I have just been advised that the figures for the invalidity pension are 56,000, which means that around 40,000 of those must not be on a fuel allowance, probably because of the household composition rule around people who are also living in the house.