Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Where one-parent family recipients contact the local Intreo centre to state they are no longer receiving maintenance due to the liable relatives losing their jobs, they need to provide a declaration to that effect. The result of this declaration means their means will be reassessed on that basis and a review marked for 12 weeks. Liable relatives who are resident in this jurisdiction and are not working because of the Covid-19 pandemic should be entitled to either the Covid-19 pandemic unemployment payment or, if their employer is availing of it, the wage subsidy scheme. The one-parent family recipients will be contacted in 12 weeks to see if there have been any changes to their circumstances and to establish if there has been any change in the situation. The means will be reassessed, if necessary, following this review.

On the need for a press statement to further highlight changes made to the flexibility of the rent supplement scheme, the Department believes there is a high level of public awareness of the changes made. One of the benefits of the changes that have been made is that there is a high level of flexibility for individual community welfare officers to support citizens who find themselves in difficulty at this point of a public health crisis. We can see this flexibility is now being broadly used. We do not see any evidence of an increase in people losing accommodation due to rent supplement restrictions. If Deputy Gannon has any concerns about this or is aware of an individual matter, if he lets me know, I will raise it with the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection to see if we can make progress on it.

As to whether an increase is needed for the payment level, rather than there being a need for the level of payment to be increased, the higher level of flexibility that has been granted on that payment is sufficient to deal with issues generated.

As to whether the eligibility age for the working payment should be revised, I believe it is fair.

I believe that the level of age that we have on the payment at the moment is fair. I accept what Deputy Gannon said about younger workers but he will have heard some of the challenges that we have concerning workers who are over the age of 66. What we have looked to do is structure this payment on the age criteria of the jobseeker's payment because that is a very well established principle regarding how we make payments available to citizens who are no longer in work. As the Deputy knows, there are now hundreds of thousands of citizens availing of the pandemic payment, which shows that it is a payment that is needed and also that the decision that was made to increase the level of payment was the right one to make. If Deputy Gannon is aware of any individual cases of citizens who are experiencing hardship because of the age decisions that have been made, he should let me know and we will examine those cases.

On whether an opt-out is needed, the Department informs me that it is not possible to opt out of the decision that has been made on the timing of when social welfare payments are made and that we have to treat everybody the same. If Deputy Gannon is aware of particular individuals who are encountering financial difficulty or concerns about when they access their payment, they should let their local community welfare officer know.

On the question put to me about Debenhams, I received a lengthy response as to why we cannot intervene with such insolvency arrangements. I will write to Deputy Gannon and provide him with the detail of the answer.

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