Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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1485. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the statutory basis for the fuel allowance scheme, the household benefits package and the free travel scheme. [16771/18]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The fuel allowance scheme, the household benefits scheme and the free travel scheme are non-statutory schemes which are operated by my Department. The schemes were introduced and extended by Ministerial Announcement.

Decisions in relation to applications for non-statutory schemes are made by Officers of my Department based on published guidelines setting out the conditions of entitlement in detail.

There are currently no plans to place the non-statutory schemes on a statutory basis. The major advantage of schemes being on a non-statutory basis is that they can be modified without needing a legislative change in response to customer needs, subject to the availability of resources. A recent example of this was the double week payment of fuel allowance during the cold weather event at the start of March.

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.