Maria Byrne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming in to discuss this all-important Bill. I compliment her on the amount of work she has done to date, certainly with regard to the different payments that were geared towards people at the lower end of the scale, as well as working families. I have come across an anomaly with regard to older people. I was speaking to a 102-year-old woman during the week. Her granddaughter is living with her because she is working towards purchasing a house. The lady cannot qualify for the fuel allowance because her granddaughter is living with her. There may be cases in the future that could be looked at. This woman is very upfront about declaring everything correctly. The granddaughter does not contribute to the household as such because her grandmother is trying to give her a start to buying her own house. The cases of people in those kinds of circumstances could be looked at down the line. However, overall, there has been fantastic uptake and welcome from people in receipt of the different payments and they have helped people towards the cost of living.

I will follow up on the school meals programme, which has been very successful. I welcome that it was expanded to many schools. The programme is mainly in DEIS schools at present. Are there plans to expand it to all schools in the future? Perhaps the Minister would be able to give her thoughts on that. Overall, the Social Welfare Bill is very positive. I welcome the change the Minister is making to CE schemes with regard to supervisors and assistant supervisors. I am involved in a community centre. Supervisors and assistant supervisors in CE schemes are the heart of the community.They do so much work and without them, a lot of the community centres would not be operational. I would like to pay tribute to those people and I commend the Minister for the changes her Department has made to support them. I also want to thank the Minister for the changes to the income disregard in the context of agri-environmental schemes, which affects both farm assist payments and job seeker payments.