Results 15,601-15,620 of 27,613 for speaker:Heather Humphreys

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Pensions Reform (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: Actually, there was a broad range of people on the commission, including a representative of Age Action or Age Friendly Ireland. I cannot remember off the top of my head which organisation was represented. It was either Age Action or Age Friendly Ireland. There were a lot of experts on the commission. As the Deputy will be aware, Ms Josephine Feehily headed up the commission. We included...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Social Welfare Benefits (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: My Department provides a comprehensive package of carers' income supports, including the carer's allowance, carer's benefit, domiciliary care allowance and the carer's support grant. Combined spending on these payments to carers in 2022 is estimated to exceed €1.5 billion. There are currently 2,976 recipients of carer's allowance in County Mayo. The Minister for Health has confirmed...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Social Welfare Benefits (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: The Deputy is correct. Carers do incredible work; I accept that. I meet them in my constituency. We help them fill out the forms and we help them to get the benefits, and all those things. I am the first Minister in 14 years to do anything about the means test for the carer's allowance. It was an issue that I was very passionate about. That change means that all carers currently are...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Social Welfare Benefits (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. The Government is committed to supporting households to control and meet energy costs through a combination of monetary supports as well as investment to improve the energy efficiency of the housing stock. The household benefits package comprises the electricity or gas allowance and the free television licence, and is just one of a range of...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Social Welfare Benefits (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: I thank the Deputy. He will appreciate that budget 2022 delivered the biggest social welfare budget package in 14 years.

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Social Welfare Benefits (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: I provided the across-the-board increases and, in addition, targeted measures to support the most vulnerable, based on recommendations by the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice. The budget increased the fuel allowance, the living alone allowance and the qualified child payment. Of course, we are considering this issue as a Government. Despite what some people say, we are not removed...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Social Welfare Benefits (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: I understand that old people living alone in particular have additional costs because they only have one income coming in. I accept that. That is why in the past two years since becoming Minister for Social Protection I have increased the living alone allowance. I have always been of the opinion that it takes the same amount of fuel to heat a house for two people as it does for one person....

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Post Office Network (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: I thank the Deputy for raising this important matter. The Government sees the post office network as a key piece of the financial and social infrastructure of the country. I have seen at first-hand the value of post offices in towns and villages throughout the country and the essential service they provide to people young and old. Throughout the pandemic, post offices stayed open and...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Post Office Network (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: I thank the Deputy. It was a pleasure to visit his constituency. There are great things happening in Cork. I know he is absolutely committed to his local post offices. He has raised with me previously the need to maintain services there. I was delighted to be able to return the jobseeker's payment to post offices. I met An Post and the Irish Postmasters' Union and spoke to them on this...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Post Office Network (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: I thank the Deputy.

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Social Welfare Eligibility (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. The back to education allowance scheme provides people with a second chance education that will improve their prospects of securing employment. It enables eligible people to pursue approved education courses and continue to receive income support for the duration of a course of study, subject to meeting certain conditions. The provision for the...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Social Welfare Eligibility (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: This scheme was originally intended for people who had not completed their secondary education and wanted to get back to work. The Deputy will appreciate that if we were to say that people could get a payment throughout their education cycle, the costs of funding people the whole way through their education would be significant. We consider that people with primary degrees are well-placed...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Social Welfare Eligibility (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: I cannot go into the details of the individual case the Deputy has raised but if he wishes to forward me a note on it, I will be happy to examine the matter.

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Social Welfare Eligibility (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: My Department's allocation of €96.5 million for 2021 has been increased to €105.4 million for 2022. This is a considerable investment in supporting participants to acquire the necessary education and skills to re-enter the labour market. Giving those who already have a degree further supports to obtain a master’s qualification, other than in the exceptional...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Social Welfare Eligibility (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: I know that.

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Pension Provisions (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: I thank the Deputy for asking this question. The programme for Government commits to introducing a pensions automatic enrolment system. The objective of this commitment is to increase the proportion of employees in Ireland with supplementary pension cover, which includes both occupational and personal pensions. According to figures from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, the rate of...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Pension Provisions (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: As we know, the State pension provides a basic level of income and an effective protection against pensioner poverty. It is not designed or intended to secure full pension adequacy for all retirees in the sense of replacing employment income on retirement. One does have a situation where people have a sudden drop in their income and that is where one needs to have a supplementary pension. ...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Pension Provisions (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: Yes. Everybody will have to sign up to the system and people will get the choice to opt out at certain stages. We have looked at international experience and, in general, when people sign up for a pension most of them continue. Some younger people will think that if they have saved money and put it into a pension pot for five or six years that they should be allowed access the money. I...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Social Welfare Appeals (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: My Department understands the many pressures faced by customers and always seeks to ensure that claims are handled quickly and efficiently. I am pleased to report that claim processing is up to date with processing targets met, or exceeded, on average for all the main scheme areas. As an example, over the past two years substantial improvements in processing performance was achieved across...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Social Welfare Appeals (3 Feb 2022)

Heather Humphreys: For the record, the staff of the Department of Social Protection have processed over 1.8 million applications for the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, alone during Covid. There is normally about 200,000 applications per annum for the jobseeker's allowance. We have all acknowledged the good work that my staff have done and it is important that we do not forget that my staff have processed...