John Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his reply and, in particular, the last line of his response that that the Department is examining this matter, which is positive.

I will emphasise again some of the points I made earlier. I am not looking for this for everybody who is in receipt of disablement benefit, and the Minister of State said there were 14,500 recipients. I am asking about somebody who is in receipt of that payment and is below the means test. What percentage of those 14,500 recipients are in receipt of 50% or less? I would argue that it is a significantly lower figure.

The Minister of State's response stated that qualification for incapacity supplement in addition to disablement benefit qualifies the recipient for the fuel allowance. The issue here is with older people, in particular, who have transitioned on to the pension and will not be able to receive that supplement payment. These are the two constituents I am referring to here, that is, people who are long since out of work and are living on their own and are struggling with rising fuel costs. They are being excluded from support under the fuel allowance because in one case the person was unfortunate enough to have had a workplace accident while in the other case the person has a respiratory illness as a direct result of work. I do not think that that is right and proper.