Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are 372,000 recipients of fuel allowance. We are expecting about 81,000 people to apply, although we do not know exactly what the number will be. We will have an online form out before Christmas. We will have it out as soon as we can. We are working on it and the officials have been working long hours to design it because you have to be careful with anything that goes online. There will be a paper form in due course but speed is of the essence. I am sure there will be plenty of young people around over Christmas and if their elderly relatives are stuck with the online form then the young people will be good in making the applications for their grandparents if necessary. We will have a paper-based application but the online one is coming up first because we want to try to do this as quickly as possible. The good news is that when you get your application in, it will be backdated to 1 January. We want to make sure people get this payment and we are launching this to help older people and give them the sense of security that they can switch on their heaters if they want to.

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