Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I will try to answer those. If I miss any, come back to me, Chair.

The first one is administration, A.2, as the Deputy said, non-pay. A lot of the increase there would be to do with the payments we make for medical certs. We pay the doctors for the medical certs, obviously, for people who are off sick. We also pay An Post for the services it delivers on our behalf. When I am in here with my rural hat on, everybody wants everybody in the post office to collect their payments, and I support that too. There is a price for that but it is well worth it.

As to why the one-parent family payment went down, sometimes the children get older and then fall out of the payment, but there are many one-parent families going back to work. That is a good thing.

The Deputy asked me about was the disability allowance. An additional €215.2 million is required for that. It is driven primarily by the range of lump-sum payments which will be provided for 2024, including October and Christmas bonus double payments, the €400 long-term disability lump sum, the €200 living alone lump sum allowance and so on. An additional €56 million is required to fund an emerging overspend of the scheme due to a higher-than-estimated number of recipients. The scheme is demand-led and there have been a higher-than-estimated number of claimants in 2024. Our population is getting bigger and we can expect to see increases in these different schemes and the number of people who apply for them.

The additional needs payments have increased because more people are moving into their own homes. That is good because they are getting into houses and we are helping them to meet some of the costs they incur when they move into a new house. I remember being in the credit union and, unfortunately, the first person who sometimes arrived with the new house was the boy with the magazine and the apparently low rate of payment. Sometimes it was the moneylender and they were signed up. It is great that we are in the position to help people to buy some of the white goods they need. I always felt it was important that social welfare get in there and talk to people who move into new houses in order that they do not put themselves into debt. I saw what happens when they get themselves into huge debt and cannot repay those loans. It is not a nice place for people to be. MABS has always played an important role too in advising them, but here again I am happy that we can support them with those additional needs payments.

Have I answered all the Deputy's questions?