Results 18,301-18,320 of 40,330 for speaker:Leo Varadkar

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: Sorry, what report?

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: The next quarterly report will be out either at the end of this month or in early June. There is a lag because the way that JobPath works, as the Deputy knows, is that one is enrolled in JobPath and in it for a year, so it is not possible to get results until the year is complete.

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: People had started to be signed up in 2015 but no one had completed the programme until 2016 or if they had, it was in very small numbers.

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: Monitoring is provided in the contract. There are inspectors.

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: It is in under administration. I take the Deputy's point, it would make some sense to have it in working age supports. The reason it is under the administration heading is that it is a payment out but so is JobsPlus.

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: To answer Deputy O'Dea's question, the performance targets and outputs for the working age employment supports are given in the brief to the committee. The outputs are things such as the movement of long-term unemployed people into employment, the reduction of the persistence rate, which is the rate at which short-term unemployed people become long-term unemployed, an increase in the exit...

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: We believe the increase in the recipients of carer's allowance is largely down to demographics, with more people and an aging population. We are deciding 73% of disability allowance within 12 weeks, which has improved quite substantially. I appreciate that anyone waiting that long is waiting a very long time. Of course, we pay in arrears. Much of the time people are on basic supplementary...

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: It comes to 57,900. That is not in any given week, but an average over the 52 weeks. That is up from 56,010. These are only estimates.

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: Additional employment, pay rises and other things need to be factored in.

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: I will start at the top with DCA. The reason we are not meeting the target relates largely to a High Court judgment which required us to modify the process for deciding DCA and other medical scheme applications to demonstrate that the decisions comply with social welfare legislation. The High Court found in April 2016 that the decision letter provided in a negative decision for DCA cases...

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: As is the case with of any type of fraud, whether it is employer fraud, corporate fraud, tax fraud or whatever, one can only ever recover a certain proportion of the amount of fraud that takes place. The sum of €41 million is only a proportion of that and I would like us to recover a lot more of it. If I was in the Department of Finance, I would adopt the same approach to tax fraud...

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: With the exception of in camerahearings, our courts operate in public. The Deputy should table legislation to close our courts to public scrutiny because all these things are published. It is in the local newspapers as the information is taken from the District Court reports.

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: Yes. We will get our control people to talk directly to the committee.

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: Perhaps we can have the people from our control section, whose daily job is to do this work, meet the committee or meet it privately.

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: Yes.

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: Does the Deputy think what I said is untrue? It is true. These are published cases.

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: Can I make a brief reply?

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: I will try not to provoke him.

Select Committee on Social Protection: Estimates for Public Services 2017
Vote 37 - Social Protection (Revised) (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: We have a budget. As much as five sixths of our publicity budget is used on telling people about things they are entitled to, and we will keep doing so. Not that long ago there was a campaign on insurance fraud that asked people to report fraudsters. It was broadcast on television, aired on radio and displayed on billboards. The reason for the campaign was because we all pay for insurance...

Written Answers — Department of Social Protection: Social Welfare Payments Administration (18 May 2017)

Leo Varadkar: The Department for Social Protection operates its contract for cash payment services with An Post. The Department signed this contract with An Post in December 2013 and it came into effect in January 2014. The contract ran for an initial two years, expiring at the end of 2015. However the contract can be extended for up to a further four years on an annual basis, i.e. to the end of 2019....