Results 10,601-10,620 of 40,550 for speaker:Joan Burton

Social Welfare Benefits (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: The supplementary welfare allowance scheme, SWA, which is administered on behalf of the Department by the community welfare division of the Health Service Executive, HSE, is designed to provide immediate and flexible assistance for those in need who do not qualify for payment under other State schemes. Since 1 May 2004, all applicants for SWA regardless of nationality are required to be...

Social Welfare Benefits (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: The people involved have applied to the Irish social welfare system for a number of different payments. Some of those payments are determined by medical criteria. The view of the medical experts, who make their judgments in a medical context, was that they did not qualify for the payments for which they applied on medical grounds. With regard to the other payments for which they applied,...

Social Welfare Benefits (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: Yes. The Deputy must appreciate that in respect of the habitual residence condition there is a line between people moving to this country and claiming significant benefits from the State, which is currently under pressure, in a situation where they are not habitually resident in this country. They were in receipt of payments for a year, their case was reviewed and it is now subject to an...

Departmental Agencies (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: Pobal delivers a range of publicly and EU-funded programmes on behalf of a number of Departments. My reply concerns services delivered by Pobal in respect of the rural social scheme and the community services programme that transferred to the Department of Social Protection last September following the reconfiguration of Government functions announced in March 2010. Pobal operates under the...

Departmental Agencies (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: I thank the Deputy for his question and I would be happy to hear from him in detail about the problems or delays he has encountered in respect of payment of participants. The services provided by Pobal could be provided by my Department or other Departments but it is unlikely to result in significant savings. Staff resources would need to be deployed, systems would need development and the...

Departmental Agencies (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: A number of ICT and computer facilitation upgrades are taking place in the Department. If the Deputy outlines his concerns, I will examine them. The Department of Social Protection is responsible for paying more than 1 million people some kind of payment or benefit. The Department took on redundancy and insolvency payments in order to reduce the backlog when those payments were managed by...

Departmental Staff (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: Since May 2008, some 825 posts have been assigned to the Department of Social Protection to fill critical staff vacancies and additional posts approved to deal with the significant increase in claims for the schemes operated by the Department. The assignment details on a yearly basis are set out in the following table. The majority of these posts have been sourced through the lateral...

Departmental Staff (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: There are a number of different elements to reducing the overall waiting times for people making applications for benefits and schemes, as well as for allowances. The Deputy referred to duplication and the laborious processes taking time and causing delays. One of the overall changes that the Department is undergoing currently, as the Deputy is aware, is that community welfare officers are...

Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2011: Committee Stage (Resumed) (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: We heard a number of important contributions from Deputies this morning airing concerns that the reduction in an employer's PRSI to half of what it is currently would lead to employers reducing employment or wages. I stated this morning there are two balancing measures in this legislation; one is the restoration of the minimum wage which, in effect, raises it by €1 per hour to €8.65, and...

Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2011: Committee Stage (Resumed) (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: In terms of the employer job PRSI incentive scheme, which has been available for some time, as of 10 June 2011 applications were received from 480 employers in respect of 708 employees, 313 employers were awarded exemptions in respect of 429 employers and 157 employers had claims rejected in respect of 215 employees. The numbers involved in the existing scheme are relatively low. Deputy Ó...

Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2011: Committee Stage (Resumed) (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: The jobs incentive is a stimulus package which offers incentives to employers to both retain staff and take on extra staff. I cannot offer evidence to Deputy Higgins in advance of the measures coming into effect. What will happen after the 1 July is that the minimum wage will be reinstated and employers will have a reduction of 50% in the rate of PRSI for people earning €356 per week or...

Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2011: Committee Stage (Resumed) (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: I thank Deputy Ó Snodaigh for the positive proposals he has made. I do not propose to accept the amendments because of the nature of the Bill and the way they are phrased. However, I accept the principle that the Deputy and other Deputies have set out, that we should have regular assessments the results of various initiatives. The reduction in employers' PRSI, as set out in the Bill, is...

Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2011: Committee Stage (Resumed) (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: The dependent parent's pension scheme is payable to the parent of a person who dies as a result of an occupational accident, provided that the parent has been wholly or mainly maintained by the deceased person. There are only a small number of cases of this payment. After a long and exhaustive search by the Department, the total number of such payments being made came to five. There is no...

Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2011: Committee Stage (Resumed) (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: These are important policy changes. Deputy Murphy has just referred to them. In this country, happily, more people are living to pension age and longer in retirement. The period for which an average pension will be paid will be greater than at present. That is a happy fact for Irish people and for older people. However, it has implications for how we structure pensions. It has...

Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2011: Committee Stage (Resumed) (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: It started between 1994 and 1997, when we brought in a homemaker's credits so that women who stayed at home caring got recognition.

Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2011: Committee Stage (Resumed) (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: I will go through this in a minute. It has been a debate in Irish society for almost 20 years.

Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2011: Committee Stage (Resumed) (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: I worked in hotels.

Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2011: Committee Stage (Resumed) (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: I thank all the Deputies who contributed. It is important to say that from the early 1990s, there has been a continuous debate about how to structure pensions so everybody at work, and not only particularly wealthy people, who contribute through tax and social insurance pay for their own pensions and those of others when they come to retire. Happily, people are living longer, which is a...

Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2011: Committee Stage (Resumed) (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: Deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh is correctly concerned about age discrimination. This Bill reflects the reality that older people, in general, enjoy better health and greater longevity than they did in the past.

Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2011: Committee Stage (Resumed) (15 Jun 2011)

Joan Burton: This is a blessing and bonus. It is important that people are allowed to work longer, if they so wish. The Government will examine providing for those who wish to postpone drawing down their State pension arrangements to enable them to receive an actuarially increased benefit. This is the case with several pension benefits structures in Ireland and Europe. Ireland's demographics, like...