Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Maria Byrne for raising this matter. The telephone support allowance, TSA, which was announced in budget 2018 is a weekly payment of €2.50 equating to €130 per year. Approximately 136,000 customers are currently in receipt of the TSA payment. The estimated full-year cost of the scheme is more than €18 million. The primary objective of the TSA is to support the most vulnerable people at risk of isolation, including the elderly and those with disabilities, with access to personal alarms or phones for security.Therefore, the criteria for the allowance were framed in order to direct the limited resources available to the Department in as targeted a manner as possible. People who live alone are considered among those most at risk of social isolation. This payment, along with the living alone allowance, is also in part a recognition of the greater challenges facing those living alone in avoiding poverty. The deprivation rate of couples over 65 is less than half that recorded among those over that age who live alone.

To receive the TSA, a person must be in receipt of a qualifying payment, the living alone allowance and the means-tested fuel allowance. Qualifying core payments for the TSA include payments such as the contributory or non-contributory State pension and the widow's, widower's or surviving civil partner's contributory pension. Many of the people who are in receipt of qualifying payments for the TSA would already be over the age of 70.

The living alone allowance is paid to pensioners aged 66 and over who live alone and are in receipt of the State pension or certain other social welfare payments. It is also paid to people under 66 who live alone and are in receipt of a qualifying social welfare payment. The estimated number of recipients of the living alone allowance in 2021 is over 220,000 and the estimated full year cost of the scheme in 2021 is over €217 million.

I am very aware that the living alone allowance is a very important support for vulnerable customers who live alone. CSO surveys on income and living conditions consistently show that those aged 65 and over who live alone are more likely to be at risk of poverty than people living in multiperson households. Recent ESRI research from July 2020 supports these findings by highlighting the crucial importance of the living alone allowance in minimising the risk of poverty for this group of people. That is why in budget 2021 we increased the living alone allowance by €5, bringing the payment up from €14 to €19 per week, at a cost of over €57 million. Together with the increase provided in budget 2020, the living alone allowance has almost doubled in the last two years.

All schemes operated by the Department are constantly reviewed and any decision to change their qualifying criteria would have to be considered in the context of overall budgetary negotiations.