Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I again thank the Senator for raising this issue, which is important to all of us in both Houses who represent people who need the extra assistance to be able to avail of these supports. We are all glad that the wider review is under way. Hopefully it will change the criteria and make it possible for someone to be able to be assessed not just on the criteria that we have all been used to in recent years. I also welcome the work on that in recent months. Hopefully that will be answered quite soon.

I am taking this issue on behalf of the Department of Finance. I cannot give an exact date for the appointment of the board, but we are very close to that. Applications closed on 29 April. Hopefully there will be movement on this very soon. I understand the urgency. It has taken a bit of time since last November, but as the Senator knows, the board resigned and needed to be replaced. We should be able to have that up and running pretty soon, allowing progress on some of the applications the Senator is concerned about and which she raised today.

The scheme works extremely well and provides relief from VAT, VRT as well as providing the fuel grant which is of great assistance to a number of families. It involves significant tax expenditure and it is important that we get that right. Between the vehicle registration tax and the VAT forgone, and the fuel grant, the scheme cost €50 million in 2015. It cost about €67 million in 2020, the year for which we have the most up-to-date figures. It is a significant amount of money. In most cases it is money well spent and of great assistance. All involved would like to see it progressed further