Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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603. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection her plans to award free travel passes to persons with epilepsy and their travel companions in view of the fact that many are banned from driving and are advised by doctors not to cycle and not to use public transport unaccompanied; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [14102/18]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The current free travel scheme provides free travel on the main public and private transport services for those eligible under the scheme. These include road, rail and ferry services provided by companies such as Bus Átha Cliath, Bus Éireann and Iarnród Éireann, as well as Luas and services provided by almost 80 private transport operators. There are approximately 904,000 customers in receipt of free travel.

Persons resident in Ireland who are over 66 and persons in receipt of certain social welfare payments are eligible for the scheme. The social welfare payments that allow persons aged under 66 to a free travel pass include disability allowance, invalidity pension, carer’s allowance and partial capacity benefit. Disability allowance and invalidity pension are both long term illness payments, and so people in receipt of those payments will already have eligibility.

For a customer to receive a companion pass they would have to be assessed as medically unfit to travel alone.

There are currently no plans to change the eligibility criteria of the free travel scheme to include persons who are not paid a benefit by my Department.

If the free travel scheme was to be extended to people who are not eligible for a qualifying payment, an assessment process would be required for all such applications, changing the nature of the scheme. Successive Governments have instead used existing underlying entitlements to confer eligibility for this scheme.

In addition, any decision to extend the free travel scheme to persons who are not in receipt of a primary qualifying payment would have to be considered in the context of overall budgetary negotiations.

Under the supplementary welfare allowance scheme (SWA) the Department of Social Protection may award a travel supplement in any case where the circumstances of the case so warrant. The supplement is intended to assist with ongoing or recurring travel costs that cannot be met from the client’s own resources and are deemed to be necessary. Every decision is based on consideration of the circumstances of the case, taking account of the nature and extent of the need and of the resources of the person concerned.

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.