Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have tabled this Adjournment matter as a result of the public highlighting of the fact that relatives of deceased people are receiving correspondence from the Department of Social Protection. I have had several telephone conversations and items of electronic correspondence with the Department since tabling the matter to establish why I did so. The reason is quite simple. I have been contacted by a number of concerned citizens who have received correspondence from the Department of Social Protection about the qualification for entitlements of deceased relatives one or two years after they had passed away. Several days ago on Clare FM, the local radio station, I heard a person whose son, who had Down's syndrome, had passed away 11 years ago. The Department sent correspondence addressed to the deceased person seeking the return of a free travel pass because disability payments had ceased. It upset many people in the constituency and highlighted the fact that computer-generated correspondence is being sent to people who have been deceased for many years.

I seek the introduction of protocols in the Department of Social Protection to ensure no correspondence will issue to somebody who has passed away. I suggest that this can be achieved if those responsible for issuing death certificates collect PPS numbers and are responsible for notifying all relevant Departments, the HSE and the Revenue Commissioners so that deceased persons do not receive any further correspondence from the State. This is a moral responsibility, because it causes significant distress to the families when they receive such correspondence. I picked the Department of Social Protection because hundreds of thousands of people are in receipt of payments from the Department and it was the Department highlighted in the recent Clare FM exposé.