Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am not proposing to accept this amendment.

The bereavement grant was an insurance based payment. It was entirely based on the amount of credits that somebody had. It was valued at €850 and was usually paid to the person responsible for payment of funeral expenses. The scheme was abolished in January 2014. In 2013, the value of the scheme amounted to just over €20 million. It was given to people in the main who were not the most vulnerable people in society. The social welfare assistance payment and the supplementary welfare allowance scheme were always available, even when the €850 was being given to people who did not or could not necessarily afford to bury their loved ones. These exception payments are made to the most vulnerable people in society. The Government provided just over €31.5 million in total expenditure for both of those payments last year. There was an average payment of €2,700 per family for bereavement and burial expenses. The total expenditure was €4.4 million.That is for those people who genuinely could not afford the expenses of burying a loved one. In the intervening years, expenditure under the supplementary welfare allowance scheme has remained broadly the same. In 2014 it was €4.6 million, and expenditure in 2015 and 2016 amounted to just over €5 million. The figure for 2017 will be €5.2 million. The average payment, as I said, is just under €3,000. I know it is something Fianna Fáil wanted to look at in the budget but during our negotiations, the value of the contribution that would have to be given to every social insurance contributor was deemed to be more effectively spent with people who are genuinely vulnerable. This led to an increase in the qualified child allowance, the extension of fuel allowance by a week and giving an increase of €5 on pro rata pension payments to all old-age pensioners, blind pensioners, people with disabilities or an inability to work and people on partial capacity payments. All of those people are genuinely vulnerable. There is also the idea of maintaining the current practice within the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection of looking after people with regard to burial and funeral costs when they are vulnerable and cannot afford to pay the expense themselves.