Áine Brady (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

During the course of this debate, Deputies raised queries in respect of the illness benefit, in particular section 3. This section deals with the method of calculating the cumulative number of benefit days for illness benefit purposes. Customers who have fewer than 260 PRSI contributions may claim illness benefit for periods up to 312 days while those with more than 260 PRSI contributions may claim illness benefit for periods up to 624 days. Periods of illness benefit not separated by more than 26 weeks are added together in order to arrive at the cumulative number of reckonable days. Only benefit days within the preceding 12-month period are counted for 312 day cases while benefit days within the preceding 24-month period, or from 5 January 2009 if shorter, may be counted for 624 day cases. Therefore, a situation may arise where the 312 day cases could be treated more favourably than the 624 day cases even though the 624 day customers have paid more contributions. The section addresses that anomaly.

Current illness benefit claims are not affected by this change. Section 3 comes into operation on 3 January 2011 and only a small number of new claims made after that date, which are linked to an earlier claim, will be affected. This year, we expect to award approximately 250,000 illness benefit claims. Approximately 52% of illness benefit claims are linked to an earlier claim. When the change is introduced, less than 0.5% of such claims will be affected, that is, approximately 600 over the course of the year.

No costs arise from this change. Indeed, there will be a small saving on expenditure estimated at €200,000 per annum. Nearly 82,000 customers were in receipt of illness benefit at 12 November and we spend approximately €77 million per month on this benefit. To the end of October 2010, we spent €772 million. In 2009, we spent nearly €918 million.

Clarification was sought regarding the impact of section 10 on the requirement to satisfy the habitual residence condition for carers allowance. This section amends the rules relating to the means test for the carers allowance scheme so as to exempt any foreign social security payment, up to the appropriate level of the Irish State contributory pension, that is paid to the carer or the spouse of the carer. It will ensure a more equal treatment of those in receipt of foreign welfare payments. The amendment will mean that all income regardless of source will be assessed against the income disregards currently provided for under the carers allowance scheme. This change will not impact on a carer's requirement to satisfy the habitual residence condition. The requirement to be habitually resident in Ireland was introduced as a qualifying condition for certain social assistance schemes and child benefit with effect from 1 May 2004. A person who does not satisfy the habitual residence condition is not eligible for specified social welfare payments regardless of citizenship, nationality, immigration status or any other factor. The purpose of this condition is to safeguard the social welfare system from abuse by restricting access for people who are not economically active and who have little or no established connection with Ireland. Under EU rules which prohibit discrimination on nationality grounds in relation to social security, it is not possible to exempt Irish citizens from the HRC, either in general or for carer's allowance, without extending the same treatment to all EU Nationals.

I now turn to the implication of changing the HRC condition in relation to carer's allowance claims. Fewer than 1.5% of applications for carer's allowance are refused on habitual residence grounds. Given the continuing rise in applications for carer's allowance, there could be significant cost implications in any change to the qualifying criteria. A proposal along the lines of transferring the habitual residency requirement from the carer to the person being cared for, has previously been examined in the Department. While such a change could be of benefit to the small number of applicants who are refused on the grounds of HRC, it would have significant administrative, financial and legal implications. For example, it would be necessary to establish the means of a person whose centre of interest, spouse, partner, family and property are abroad, which could be difficult if not impossible. It would transfer the burden of proving habitual residency onto the person being cared for which could lead to situations in which a care might not be eligible for carer's allowance if the person for whom he or she cares is recently arrived in Ireland. This might include elderly persons returning to be cared for by their adult children.

This year, as of 15 November, we have received 16, 519 applications for carer's allowance. Some 572 of those cases were sent for further assessment on habitual residency grounds and 245 of these were refused on the basis of habitual residency, of which 46 were Irish nationals. This means that fewer than 1.5% of all applications are refused on habitual residency grounds

The supplementary welfare allowance scheme, SWA, which includes rent supplement, is administered on behalf of the Department by the community welfare service division of the Health Service Executive. The purpose of rent supplement is to provide short-term support to eligible people living in private rented accommodation, whose means are insufficient to meet their accommodation costs and who do not have accommodation available to them from any other source. Under the relevant legislative provisions, the Department's relationship is with the tenant; who makes the application for rent supplement and payment is made to him or her.

Rent supplement is specifically for the benefit of tenants to assist them with their accommodation needs. Legislation provides, however, for the making of a rent supplement payment to another person - for example, a relative, a landlord or landlord's agent - on behalf of the recipient, at the tenant's request and is subject to the consent of the HSE. The most common use of this provision is where the executive make rent supplement payments to landlords. Where an applicant nominates another person to receive their rent supplement this does not alter the HSE's relationship with the applicant. Where a person is unable to manage his or her financial affairs with respect to accommodation costs, the executive may appoint some other person to act on behalf of the applicant, exercising any rights or powers on behalf of him or her. The appointed person may receive and deal with any sum payable by way of supplementary welfare allowance, which includes rent supplement.

The efficiency of the scheme would be significantly affected as CWOs would potentially have to deal with some 96,000 additional clients. This would involve greater complexity and significant resources to deal with a new set of third parties. In particular, it could result in CWOs being drawn into disputes between both landlords and tenants.

I will not deal with the 30-hour limit rent and mortgage supplement. In recent years, a significant number of people have come to rely on rent supplement for extended periods, including people on local authority housing waiting lists. One of the measures introduced to address the issue of long-term rent supplementation is the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, which gives local authorities specific responsibility for meeting the long-term housing needs of people receiving rent supplement for 18 months or more. Rent supplement is not payable where a person or his or her spouse or partner is in full-time employment, that is for 30 hours a week or more. However, provision was made in 2007 whereby a person on rent supplement who is accepted as eligible for accommodation under RAS may return to full-time work, subject to a means test, without losing the entire rent supplement payment. Those who transfer to RAS and engage in employment will have the advantage of the differential rent scheme which is administered by the various local authorities.

The specification of 30 hours as the upper limit for part-time employment is unique to the rent supplement and mortgage interest supplement schemes. On the basis of a normal 40 hour full working week, 19 or 20 hours a week is used in a number of social welfare contexts to determine full-time employment, for example, FIS, insurability, etc. The 30 hour per week limit has been in place since 1977 when the SWA scheme came into operation. The use of 30 hours as the part-time limit for SWA is designed to be as advantageous as possible to individuals returning to the employment market without including those in full-time employment, thus reflecting the scheme's original purpose of a short-term income support payment. Support for those in full-time employment and residing in the private sector is best provided through the RAS and other social housing schemes.

The 30 hour limit was considered as part of the expenditure review of the supplementary allowance scheme. The review, recognising the short-term nature of the scheme and acknowledging that support to those in full-time employment and residing in the private rental sector is best provided through rental assistance arrangements, was satisfied that the 30-hour rule should continue to apply at least until the full implementation of the new rental assistance arrangements have been achieved.

As regards electronic certification, at present in order to qualify for job seeker's benefit or job seeker's allowance, an applicant must fulfil a number of conditions, including being available for and genuinely seeking work. To fulfil those conditions job seekers must, at regular intervals, make a declaration to the effect that they are still unemployed, available for and actively seeking work. This is what is known as the certification process or signing on, and is currently carried out by a job seeker going to his or her local social welfare office.

One of the provisions the Minister is including in this Bill will be to allow certain people who receive job seeker's allowance or job seeker's benefit to complete the certification process by electronic means. We will be changing the current signing on process in our local and branch offices to collect signatures via a digital signature pad, and we are exploring the possibility of using electronic channels for certification, such as on-line through the Internet or by use of a mobile telephone. These new channels are being introduced to enable us to carry out the certification process more efficiently, while delivering better customer service and maintaining the necessary levels of control inherent in the current manual process.

We are currently engaged in a project to examine the potential to develop an additional channel for job seeker's certification via mobile telephone. Before committing to a full-scale deployment the mobile telephone certification solution must be evaluated by the Department from both business process and technical perspectives, to test how it may work in practice to ensure necessary levels of security and control. Deployment will not proceed unless it offers a sufficient level of control in line with existing processes.

The project is scheduled to conduct a life trial at the end of 2011, in which a number of customers will be invited to participate. The selection of customers to be invited has not yet been finalised. The mobile telephone facility is intended to be made available on a risk assessment basis and will have high levels of control built in. Customers will be invited to use the channel and it will not generally be available other than on request.

I thank all the Deputies for their contributions on Second Stage.

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