Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Question 101: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs if a community welfare officer may approve an exceptional needs payment for the maintenance of a diet for cultural rather than medical reasons; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [35359/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Under the supplementary welfare allowance scheme, which is administered on behalf of the Department by the community welfare division of the Health Service Executive, a diet supplement may be paid where a special diet is prescribed for an individual as a result of a specified medical condition. Any person receiving a Social Welfare or Health Service Executive payment and who has been prescribed a special diet for medical reasons and whose means are insufficient to meet their needs, may qualify for a diet supplement.

Under the supplementary welfare allowance scheme an exceptional needs payment may be made to help meet an essential, once-off cost which the applicant is unable to meet out of his/her own resources. There is no automatic entitlement to this payment. Each application is determined by the Executive based on the particular circumstances of the case and for that reason, it is not possible to state categorically that an exceptional needs payment would or would not be made in respect of any particular once-off essential need. However exceptional needs payments would not normally be made in respect of the maintenance of a particular diet for cultural reasons.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 102: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the basis on which rent supplement has been refused in the case of a person (details supplied) in County Kildare; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [35363/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Rent supplement is administered on behalf of the Department by the community welfare division of the Health Service Executive (HSE), as part of the supplementary welfare allowance scheme.

One of the conditions for receipt of rent supplement is that the Executive must be satisfied that "the claimant is in need of accommodation and is unable to provide for it from his or her own resources".

The Executive has advised that the person concerned was refused rent supplement as it was not satisfied that he was in need of accommodation. This decision was upheld by both the HSE Appeals Office and the Social Welfare Appeals Office.