Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)

I again thank the Minister and his officials. Could I also be associated with the words of thanks from colleagues to the Department's officials and everybody who works in the Department of Social Protection? I have always found them to be very good at providing replies and answering any queries I had. I know they go above and beyond. That is very important for us all to say. I would very much appreciate if the Minister could pass that on.

I have a couple of questions. The Minister spoke about the underspend on school meals. We have had discussions on school meals and where they are going at the moment. Along with a number of colleagues, I find this to be a brilliant scheme. There is no doubt that it gives a hot meal to those who need it most and to those who we might not recognise need it most, which is also very important. It is also a great employer for locals and especially in the area where I come from, it is a serious employer. What is the Department doing to try to encourage more schools to take up the option of a hot school meal? Has it done any additional advertising? Is it working closely with the Department of education? I am aware of some schools that are not taking up the offer. The Department of education and the Department of Social Protection should be working more closely together to ensure that every school takes up the scheme and that any issues that surround the use of hot school meals are debated and worked out. I have been contacted by a number of parents about various schools that are not taking up the option. More should be done to address that because, at the end of the day, this is a great initiative and it is one that I have supported since its inception.

It will not be the first time we have spoken about my concerns on the supplementary welfare allowance. I have raised community welfare officers previously with the Minister. I refer to the number of community welfare officers that we have in the system and the fact that it is more centralised. This is a backward and retrograde step. This is not the first time the Minister has heard this from me. Now, it is much more difficult for people who need a supplementary welfare payment to get it. The community welfare officers that I deal with are excellent, but there are too few of them and they are not accessible in the way they were in previous times. When I came into politics first – I am sure it may be the same with colleagues here - you could go along to the community welfare officer, sit down and discuss your case and then you would get a result and that result was fair in all cases. My understanding is that what is happening now is that when you make an application it is sent to a central office, maybe in Sligo, and it has to be processed there before a community welfare officer sees it, and then it works it back through the system. That is wrong because we are losing the community touch and the personal touch. The fact that we have a €26 million underspend is a result of that. I would love to hear the comments of the Minister and his officials on that because in my daily work I see there has been a complete change in the community welfare officer system, one that has not worked for those that need it most.

Perhaps the Minister could also mention the exceptional needs payment and where we are with the budget on that as well. The supplementary welfare allowance is definitely an issue for me, and for many colleagues here.

I want to use the opportunity as well to briefly mention two issues. The first is to ask the Minister and the Department to look again at increasing the age for receipt of the domiciliary care allowance from 16 to 18. Only this week I had two cases where families are going to the nth degree with their 16-year-olds to try to prove that they have a disability. That is wrong. In one of those cases it is a lifetime disability and in the other case it is something that is very hard to define, but it is something the child will have for a long time.

I want to talk to the Minister again about the fuel allowance. I know he is going to talk to me about the composition of households and targeting, but the people who I am dealing with who are, unfortunately, losing their fuel allowance are those that we need to target and support.