John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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251. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the families and persons that are entitled to fuel allowance and the new telephone allowance. [47431/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The fuel allowance is a payment of €22.50 per week from October to April, to 376,000 low income households to assist them with their energy costs. The allowance represents a contribution towards the energy costs of a household. It is not intended to meet those costs in full. Only one allowance is paid per household.

To qualify for a fuel allowance under the fuel allowance scheme, a person must satisfy a number of criteria including being resident in the State, having primary responsibility for the heating of a household andbeing in receipt of a qualifying payment.

A fuel applicant and members of his/her household may have a combined assessable income of up to €100 a week above the appropriate rate of State Pension Contributory and qualify for a payment. All non-contributory recipients are accepted as satisfying this means test.

Fuel applicants must also satisfy the household composition criteria, i.e., they must live alone or only with the following:

- a qualified spouse/civil partner/cohabitant or qualified child(ren);

- a person in receipt of a qualifying payment who would be entitled to the allowance in their own right;

- a person who is receipt of Carer’s Allowance or Carer’s Benefit in respect of providing full time care and attention to the Fuel Allowance applicant or their qualified spouse/civil partner/cohabitant or qualified child(ren);

a person receiving short term Jobseeker's Allowance (JA) or Basic Supplementary Welfare Allowance (less than 391 days for JA and less than 15 months/456 days for Basic SWA).

Therefore a social welfare dependant who is living with someone other than those listed above would not be entitled to the fuel allowance.

The new weekly telephone support allowance (TSA) of €2.50 will be paid from June 2018. People in receipt of both the living alone increase and fuel allowance will automatically qualify for the TSA. It is expected that approximately 124,000 customers will qualify for the scheme at a cost of €16 million in 2018.

A central objective of the TSA is to allow the most vulnerable people access to personal alarms or phones for security. The allowance will also encourage social contact and assist in the prevention of social isolation for those living alone.

Therefore as stated above only customers who are in receipt of fuel allowance and the living alone increase will receive the new weekly TSA.

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.