Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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179. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the number of persons receiving a death benefit in 2015 and 2016; the total paid in death benefits in 2015 and 2016; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15864/17]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Death benefit is one of the benefits payable under the occupational injuries benefit scheme. It is payable in the form of a pension to the widow, widower, surviving civil partner or orphan of an insured person who dies as a result of an occupational accident or a prescribed occupational disease or where the immediately before death, the deceased was in receipt of a disablement pension due to the loss of 50% or more of their physical or mental faculty.

A funeral grant is also payable to the next-of-kin.

The deceased must have been in insurable employment at the time of the accident or the disease which caused their death.

In 2015 expenditure was €8.2m in paying 655 death benefit pensions. This increased to 711 at the end of 2016 with an estimated expenditure of €8.3m.