Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Question 127: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs her views on whether there is room in her Department's budget for cuts, that would not affect the most vulnerable in society. [34844/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Social welfare spending has been prioritised in this Budget. Next year, total funding for the Department of Social and Family Affairs will be €19.6 billion. This represents an increase of €2.6 billion or 15.5% over the Estimates allocation for 2008. Over 1.7 million people and their dependents will benefit from this expenditure.

Unfortunately, it has been necessary to take some steps to reduce expenditure but these have been kept to the absolute minimum and applied in a careful manner. Where possible, associated measures will also be implemented to alleviate the impact on persons affected by the measures, especially social welfare dependent families. Most of the proposed measures relate to changes in the eligibility criteria for social insurance based schemes and, in these cases, the most vulnerable people will normally be entitled to a means tested social assistance payment instead.

It should also be noted that the Estimates published on Budget day provide for significant savings next year in various areas of the Department's administrative expenditure including travel and subsistence, postage, consultancy services and advertising.

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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Question 128: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the funding which has been allocated through her Department by the Citizens Information Board to the Sign Language Interpretation Service each year since its establishment in April 2007; the expenditure for each year respectively; the geographical area covered by the service; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [34733/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Since its establishment in 2007, the Sign Language Interpretation Service has been allocated funding of €300,000 for each of the years 2007 and 2008 from the Citizens Information Board. The 2007 allocation was fully utilised by SLIS and it is expected that the full allocation for 2008 will also be required.

The service is a national service providing a limited number of sign language interpreters to meet the needs of a range of public bodies and the private sector. Since SLIS began operations in April 2007 it has dealt with over 1,000 bookings. An analysis of bookings indicates that educational interpreting for third level colleges accounted for the largest area of demand followed by health and legal interpreting.