Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 18 January 2024

Public Accounts Committee

Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 37 - Social Protection
Social Insurance Fund 2022
Report on the Accounts of the Public Services 2022
Chapter 13 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 14 - Ex gratia Payments of €1.4 million to Social Welfare Branch Managers
Chapter 15 - Raising Social Welfare Overpayments
Chapter 16 - Recovery of Welfare Overpayments
Chapter 17 - Actuarial Review of the Social Insurance Fund

9:30 am

Mr. John McKeon:

Officials are currently engaged in an internal review of our means-testing regime.

Some of the means test limits for capital for jobseeker's allowance is €20,000. It has been like that for a long time. There is a question about whether some of those limits should be changed, and so on. The outcome of that internal review will not be published. This is an input to budget discussion, so it is obviously a budgetary matter. We are involved, and all politicians, not just Government politicians, are interested in these issues. They are concerned that the means testing system is fair. We have made a number of changes to means tests in recent years, as the Deputy will have noticed. They were policy decisions by Government. Different politicians from different parts, and I do not want to be political about it-----