Results 1,021-1,040 of 15,365 for speaker:Dara Calleary

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Departmental Staff (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: My Department has a staffing complement of approximately 7,300 both permanent and temporary staff who deliver services through a nationwide network of offices, with a very high level of public engagement, both through front office services (via Intreo offices, Public offices and Branch offices) and by phone through a number of contact centres. The table below shows the number of incidents...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Social Welfare Payments (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: The Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025 contains a commitment to "Consider and prepare a report for Government on the potential application of the benchmarking approach to other welfare payments". The roadmap also includes a commitment to develop a benchmarking approach for use in adjusting the value of State pension payments. It is worth noting that indexing weekly social protection...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Social Welfare Benefits (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: Domiciliary Care Allowance (DCA) is an allowance payable in respect of a child aged under 16 who has a severe disability requiring continual or continuous care and attention substantially in excess of the care and attention normally required by a child of the same age and where the level of the child's disability is such that the child is likely to require that level of additional care and...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: State Pensions (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: My Department has a commitment to an annual level of control reviews and operates an ongoing continuous schedule of control and review activity for those in receipt of a pension. The objective is to ensure that customers on a pension, regardless of age, continue to receive their correct rate of payment over the lifetime of their claim. On review, claimants on a means tested payment or...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Social Welfare Appeals (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: The Social Welfare Appeals Office is an Office of the Department of Social Protection which is responsible for determining appeals against decisions in relation to social welfare entitlements. Appeals Officers are independent in their decision making functions. As of the 31st of March 2025, the current processing times for appeals is 20.9 weeks. The Appeals Office current has 18,934...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Social Welfare Benefits (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: The Programme for Government has committed to protect core welfare rates while ensuring that available resources are targeted at vulnerable groups. As referenced by the Deputy, the Programme for Government includes a commitment to examine key ancillary benefits such as the fuel allowance, household benefits package and living alone allowance to support vulnerable groups. This is in fact...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: School Meals Programme (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: Following my announcement on the 11 April 2025, there are 2,850 primary schools now participating in the Hot School Meals Programme for the current academic school year. As announced in Budget 2025, Hot School Meals will be extended to all remaining primary schools in 2025 meaning that there will be 3,200 eligible schools in respect of 550,000 children from September 2025. The total...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: School Meals Programme (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: The objective of the School Meals Programme is to provide regular, nutritious food to children to support them in taking full advantage of the education provided to them. The programme is an important component of policies to encourage school attendance and extra educational achievement. Following my announcement on the 11 April 2025, there are 2,850 primary schools now participating in...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Social Welfare Rates (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: As Minister for Social Protection, I am fully committed to making the case for a fair budget that protects the people most in need in our society - particularly families on low incomes and those people, including pensioners and carers who are dependent on social welfare payments.As part of Budget 2025, a €2.6 billion Social Protection package was secured. This was, for the third year...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Departmental Schemes (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: My Department provides a range of employment supports to people with disabilities. My Department launched the Work and Access scheme in July 2024. This new scheme offers seven supports to help reduce and remove barriers in the workplace for people with a disability. Grants are available for communication supports, workplace adaptations and training. Supports are available for both the...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Social Welfare Benefits (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: Jobseeker's Pay-Related Benefit is a new social insurance income support which has replaced the Jobseeker's Benefit scheme for people who are fully unemployed and whose first day of unemployment is on or after 31 March 2025. Pay-Related Benefit means that the rate of income support is directly linked to previous earnings subject to a maximum payment amount. Our bilateral agreement with...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Social Welfare Code (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: The Programme for Government: Securing Ireland’s Future commits to reform the Disability Allowance Payment and remove anomalies in the current means test; there is no commitment to remove the means test. Over the last four budgets the Government have progressively improved payment rates and income disregards for disabled people. The weekly payment rates for Disability Allowance...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Social Welfare Appeals (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: The Social Welfare Appeals Office is an Office of the Department of Social Protection which is responsible for determining appeals against decisions in relation to social welfare entitlements. Appeals Officers are independent in their decision making functions. As of the 31st of March 2025, the current processing time for Disability Allowance appeals is 22.9 weeks. The Chief Appeals...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Social Welfare Payments (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: My Department has a commitment to an annual level of control reviews and operates an ongoing continuous schedule of control and review activity for scheme recipients, including those in receipt of disability or pension payments. The objective is to ensure that customers continue to receive their correct rate of payment over the lifetime of their claim. Reviews can arise from customer...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Social Welfare Appeals (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: The Social Welfare Appeals Office is an Office of the Department of Social Protection which is responsible for determining appeals against decisions in relation to social welfare entitlements. Appeals Officers are independent in their decision making functions. The Social Welfare Appeals Regulations 2024 (S.I. No. 744 of 2024) were signed into law in December 2024 and will come into...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Social Welfare Payments (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: The Department is committed to providing a quality service to its customers. This includes ensuring that applications are processed and that decisions on entitlement are made as quickly as possible. Processing times vary across schemes, depending on the differing eligibility criteria. Schemes that require a high level of documentary evidence from the customer, particularly in the case of...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Social Welfare Benefits (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: Child Benefit is a monthly payment to families with children up to the age of 16 years. The payment continues to be paid in respect of children until their nineteenth birthday where they are in full-time education or have a disability. It is paid in respect of almost 1.3 million children. Expenditure on the scheme is estimated at over €2.2 billion in 2025. It is important to note...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Social Welfare Benefits (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: The Social Welfare Appeals Office is an Office of the Department of Social Protection which is responsible for determining appeals against decisions in relation to social welfare entitlements. Appeals Officers are independent in their decision making functions. I am advised by the Social Welfare Appeals Office that an appeal for the above motioned was received and registered in that...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Social Welfare Payments (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: Under the Supplementary Welfare Allowance (SWA) scheme, my Department may make an Additional Needs Payment (ANP) to help meet expenses that an eligible person cannot pay from their weekly income. The ANP scheme is demand led and administered by Community Welfare Officers (CWOs) in the Community Welfare Service (CWS), taking into account the requirements of the legislation and all the...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: School Meals Programme (1 May 2025)

Dara Calleary: There is a nutritional standard in place for the School Meals Programme since it’s inception. A specific standard was set for School Meals under the Nutritional Standards for School Meals and Nutritional Standards for Hot School Meals. A technical Nutrition Sub Group comprised of Dietitians from the following organisations was involved in developing these standards: The Irish...