Mr. Eoin Ó Seaghdha:

Deputy O'Dea asked about the numbers. Up to a fortnight ago, 21 September, 1,019 applications had been received. Of those, 764 had gone through the process of having a medical assessment and a medical opinion provided, 645 were in payment and the vast majority of those medical opinions had indicated, as we would have expected, that the people concerned were in the moderate category. Typically, they are people one would expect to be closest to the labour market in any event. Very few were found to be ineligible for payment. It was inevitable that some people might come through who would have been due for review in the ordinary course of events and might have been found to be ineligible. A total of 18 so far have fallen into that category, so it is very few.

The Deputy asked about costs. Essentially, the "savings" the Department is making in terms of giving slightly reduced payments to people who are availing of the scheme are negligible at present in the context of the sums the Department pays out for invalidity pension or illness benefit. We have not started to calculate what they are, but they would be thousands rather than the millions we pay out.

Deputy Ryan asked for our thoughts on the scheme. He is correct that to some extent people are testing the waters and trying to see where they would fit in it. On the operational side in the Department for the people dealing with this, a large part of the work is trying to tease through these matters with applicants. This is a voluntary scheme. There is no compulsion to take it up. Even if people take it up and it does not work, there is no penalty. People go back to their original entitlement without question. They do not have to go through a hoop again but return to their primary payment.

What we are trying to move from is a system where there was an exemption, which was, again, a way of testing the water. The idea was that it would be a time limited thing. One would get an exemption from the rules of invalidity benefit or invalidity pension and take up work. If it worked for the person, he or she might move on. However, that was not recognising that people needed an income support payment given their position in terms of their capacity to engage in the labour market. Partial capacity provides that long-term support.

It can last until the person is 66 if he or she is able to continue in work. It is a shift away from a short-term testing of the waters to a longer-term income support, permanently provided by the State. As Ms Leonard said, we are at the infancy stage of the scheme and we will keep an eye it on all the time to see if we can tweak and improve it. As the scheme involves a medical assessment, there is inevitably a time lag. Those on the operational side of the Department are trying to ensure that a red flag is raised when a job is hanging on the medical assessment and it is fast-tracked through the medical assessment system. As members will know, the pressures on that system are significant. On average it takes between six and seven weeks from the receipt of the application and the award or otherwise of the payment. On an operational basis they try to fast-track people who contact them. There is considerable dialogue between the Department and individual clients in trying to address that.