Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

Many couples and single people think that is grossly unfair and cannot understand why they are not allowed hold on to social welfare payments while receiving money through the rural social scheme. Deputy Ring suggests that this is the case on FÁS schemes and he is correct, but it is done to encourage lone parents and so on back into the workforce.

The difference with the rural social scheme is that there is a third source of income that the Deputy is ignoring. A person on the rural social scheme must by definition either own a farm, be a fisherperson or be closely connected to such a person. This third source of income makes the rural social scheme very different from FÁS because very few people on CE schemes have an income beyond what they receive through FÁS.

The Deputy asked how much it would cost to implement his proposed change and that is the $64,000 question because the number of people on the scheme is small. However, the Deputy's proposal, allowing an individual to retain his or her full social welfare payment with the full RSS payment and farm income, could prove very attractive and could lead to many people joining the scheme under the relevant category. I do not know how much this would cost but such payments to lone parents, widows and widowers constitute a large part of the cost of CE schemes.

The matter of the widow's or widower's contributory pension has been raised and, again, this depends on which side of the fence one views it from. No means test is involved so, technically, one could receive a widow's or widower's contributory pension while owning 1,000 acres of land and receive a large occupational pension. We took the view that there are so few such people that they should be allowed on the scheme despite the lack of a means test but this is the only such group and it could be termed an anomaly.

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