Results 16,981-17,000 of 40,550 for speaker:Joan Burton

Other Questions: Jobseeker's Allowance Eligibility (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: Currently, there are 38,000 jobseekers under 25 years of age in receipt of a reduced jobseeker’s allowance payment on foot of the changes that were first introduced in 2009. Receiving the full adult rate of a jobseeker’s payment at a young age can lead to welfare dependency from an early age. If young people do not improve their skills, they are at risk of becoming long-term...

Other Questions: Jobseeker's Allowance Eligibility (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: Some of the opportunities that will be available for young people include the following: commencing on 1 January next payment under the JobsPlus initiative of a €300 per month subsidy to an employer who takes on a person unemployed for six months will, I believe, be attractive to employers; an additional in-take of 1,500 young people on to JobBridge; 1,000 Tús scheme places...

Other Questions: Work Placement Programme (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: Gateway is a work placement initiative for county and city councils. The initiative aims to improve the employability and maintain the work readiness of those who have been unemployed for 24 months or more. Similar to Tús, participants are selected by a random process conducted by the Department of Social Protection from people in receipt of a jobseeker's allowance payment for two...

Other Questions: Work Placement Programme (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: No.

Other Questions: Work Placement Programme (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: Unlike what happens in the North, where the Deputy's party is in government, there is absolutely no compulsion employed in the Irish system. I am delighted to say so. I share many of the concerns identified in various reports in Britain and Northern Ireland, but we do not do that here. The Deputy should be more au fait with the difference between social protection here, social protection...

Other Questions: Work Placement Programme (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: No, there is not.

Other Questions: Work Placement Programme (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: I wish the Deputy would take the opportunity to meet with people from the local development network.

Other Questions: Work Placement Programme (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: They have set up structures for assisting the recruitment of people from Tús. The Deputy does not seem to understand the problems of somebody who becomes long-term unemployed, particularly a young man in his mid-twenties. Six months becomes two or three years as, unfortunately, has happened to many people who worked so hard during the building boom. Their capacity and commitment to...

Other Questions: Exceptional Needs Payments (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: I emphasise that the Department provides an extensive range of supports to the immediate next of kin of people who have died. I refer to the important payments that are made to immediate families as opposed to more distant relatives such as cousins and siblings who may not have lived with the deceased. A significant number of bereavement grants were paid to people who were inheriting the...

Other Questions: Exceptional Needs Payments (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: To date this year, my Department has paid €876,000 to help people buy prams, cots and buggies for new babies. The number of applications fell slightly in 2012 compared with 2011. As Deputies are aware, many claims for a social welfare payment are not processed for weeks. With the opening of the new Intreo offices, the largest of which is located in Coolock in the Deputy's...

Other Questions: Disability Activation Projects (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: I appreciate the Deputy's remarks. His question relates specifically to community employment schemes. Of more than 21,000 participants on community employment schemes at the end of October, 983 were categorised as being in the disability allowance cohort. This indicates that only a small percentage of recipients of the disability allowance participate in community employment. While we do...

Other Questions: Disability Activation Projects (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: The community employment scheme is being refocused into two main strands. The first, activation, is directed at persons who are long-term unemployed and involved in a pathway back to work. The second is social inclusion. People who are on a disability allowance, as the Deputy will know, are not part of the activation process because they are registered with the Department as having an...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Disability Allowance Payments (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: The Department aims to process and pay without delay all successful appeals returned by the social welfare appeals office. There are currently no delays in implementing successful appeal decisions across schemes. The Deputy has been kind enough to acknowledge that we have completely overhauled our IT and processing systems in respect of domiciliary care allowance, carer's allowance and...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Disability Allowance Payments (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: Another point which must be taken into account is that as most of the 1,200 customers whose appeals are awaiting clearance are already in payment on other schemes, the arrears due will issue once overlaps with these other scheme payments are taken into account. We were obliged to update technology which was very behind the times. I pay tribute to the staff of our Longford office and those...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Disability Allowance Payments (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: That is the broad objective. I do not want to give an actual commitment at this point because at some stage there could be a flood of additional applications. Given that unemployment is falling and people are returning to work, the chances of such a flood occurring are less than they were previously when huge numbers of people understandably turned to the Department of Social Protection as...

Other Questions: Exceptional Needs Payments (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: Under the supplementary welfare allowance scheme, the Department may make a single exceptional needs payment, ENP, to help meet essential, once-off and unforeseen expenditure which a person could not reasonably be expected to meet out of his or her weekly income. The expenditure on the scheme in 2011 was €62.9 million, in 2012, €52.7 million was expended and some €31.8...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Pension Provisions (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: Let me say as well that, in 2010, the previous Government legislated to provide for bonds via the NTMA structure. That did not happen during its term. I am happy to say it has happened during my term. It is one of the items to which the Deputy referred. The demand has been fairly continuous and significant and, to date we have €1.377 billion for investment in amortising bonds.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Pension Provisions (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: In other words, the Government has created a vehicle, which has been utilised and which, I hope, will provide an important investment vehicle for pensioners in Ireland in the future.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Pension Provisions (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: It is an important issue.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Social Welfare Fraud Investigations (28 Nov 2013)

Joan Burton: There is a good working relationship between the Department of Social Protection and An Garda Síochána. We closely co-operate with each other in the context of multi-agency operations and investigations to combat social welfare fraud. A proposal for the secondment of 20 gardaí to the Department of Social Protection to assist with fraud investigation work is currently being...