Written answers

Tuesday, 28 January 2014

Department of Social Protection

Farm Assist Scheme Eligibility

Photo of Charlie McConalogueCharlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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116. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will consider reversing the changes she made to farm assist with respect to income disregards in view of the fact that it has had a serious negative affect on the income levels of struggling farming families; the reasons she is refusing to carry out an analysis to assess the impact that the changes have made on those families; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [3676/14]

Photo of Charlie McConalogueCharlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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375. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will consider carrying out an impact analysis within the farming community that the changes to farm assist have made on the income levels and farming life of struggling farming families; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [53123/13]

Photo of Charlie McConalogueCharlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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376. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will carry out an analysis on the impact of her Department's changes to farm assist with respect to income disregards have had on farmers; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [53124/13]

Photo of Joan BurtonJoan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 116, 375 and 376 together.

There were just over 10,300 recipients of farm assist at end December last and nearly €99.5 million was spent on the scheme in 2013. The farm assist scheme is based on jobseeker’s allowance. It was introduced in 1999 to replace ‘Smallholders Unemployment Assistance’ for low income farmers. Farm assist recipients retain all the advantages of the jobseeker’s allowance scheme such as retention of secondary benefits and access to activation programmes.

Recent changes to the scheme have brought it into closer alignment with the jobseeker’s allowance scheme’s treatment of self-employed persons.

Farm assist is a flexible payment and any farmer experiencing lower levels of income or cash-flow issues can ask his/her local social welfare / Intreo office to review the level of means applying to their claim.

The assessment of means for the purpose of qualifying for farm assist is designed to reflect the actual net income from farming. Income and expenditure figures for the preceding year are generally used as an indicator of the expected position in the following year. However, account is taken of any exceptional circumstances so as to ensure that the assessment accurately reflects the current situation.

As part of the normal budget process, all potential budget measures, including any changes to the farm assist scheme are assessed in terms of the impact they would have if introduced. Since the introduction of the changes to the farm assist scheme over recent budgets, no formal analysis of the impact of these changes has been carried out. However, the scheme, including the recent changes, is kept under ongoing review by my officials. Last year I met with representatives from the Irish Farmers Association to discuss a number of issues including the farm assist scheme. There are no plans to change the current scheme criteria.

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