Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein)
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316. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the amount of payments issued through the supplementary welfare allowance scheme, broken down between exceptional needs payment and urgent needs payment, and further broken down into the payments by each office which issued the payments in each of the years since 2008. [36943/16]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Under the supplementary welfare allowance (SWA) scheme, the Department may make a single exceptional needs payment (ENP) to help meet essential, once-off and unforeseen expenditure which a person could not reasonably be expected to meet out of their weekly income.

The Government has provided €30.3 million for exceptional and urgent needs payments in 2016. SWA legislation also provides for assistance in the form of an urgent needs payment (UNP) which can be made to persons who would not normally be entitled to SWA but who have an urgent need which they cannot meet from their own resources or an alternative is not available at that time. The person may be required to pay the money back in respect of a UNP at a later date in certain circumstances.

Details of the number of payments under the ENP and UNP schemes for the years 2008 and to October 2016 are set out in table 1. While statistics are maintained relating to payments under the ENP and UNP schemes, they are not maintained on the number of payments made by each office. Details of the combined number of payments under the ENP and UNP schemes by county are provided for 2013 to date in 2016 in table 2. This detailed information is not available for 2008 to 2012.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.

Table 1: Number of ENPs and UNPs from 2008 to end October 2016

Note: 2016 figures may be subject to change.

Table 2: Number of ENPs and UNPs by County from 2013 to end October 2016

Note: 2016 figures may be subject to change.