John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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76. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the reason for delays to the payment of the back to school clothing and footwear allowance; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [38814/18]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The back to school clothing and footwear allowance (BSCFA) scheme provides a once-off payment to eligible families to assist with the costs of clothing and footwear when children start or return to school each autumn. The Government has provided €49.5 million for the scheme in 2018.

The payment rates are €125 for eligible children aged 4 to 11 years and €250 for children aged over 12 years and attending secondary school.

Since 2010, in excess of 100,000 customers can be identified every year from the Department's computer system as having an automatic entitlement to the allowance. These customers are notified of their entitlement and there is no requirement for them to make an application. In addition, approximately 55,000 customers may have an entitlement but need to apply to have this entitlement assessed.

Similar to arrangements in previous years, the majority of this year’s BSCFA payments for 104,461 families in respect of approximately 190,308 children were fully automated and parents were not required to make an application to the Department. The total amount paid to families with an automatic entitlement was €33.45m and these payments were made during the week commencing 9^thJuly 2018.

In order to qualify for an automated payment the parent of the child must have been in receipt of a qualifying payment that included an increase in respect of a qualified child at the commencement of the scheme and the Department were satisfied that the household satisfied the means test for the scheme. The scheme commenced from the 1^stJune 2018 with the entitlement created based on the preceding week's entitlement.

The back to school clothing and footwear allowance is a mean-tested allowance. Qualifying for the allowance in a previous year does not in any way guarantee the customer will receive it in the current year and many customers, especially those who have had a change in their means or circumstance, will need to make an application for the payment for this year in order to have their entitlement validated. Customers with children aged 18 years or over will also need to apply and provide confirmation that the children are in full-time second-level education. Therefore, it is not possible, prior to the release of the automatic payments, to inform customers that they have no automatic entitlement to the payment.

Customers who may have received BSCFA in previous years and did not receive written confirmation of entitlement for this year by end June will need to make an application. The Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance scheme is open for new applications until 30 September 2018. Over 300 applications are still being received on a daily basis.

To date (24 September 2018) 138,203 families have been awarded the allowance in respect of 255,353 children, 8,944 applications have been refused and 3,867 are awaiting a decision.Expenditure to date on the scheme is €45.33m.

The BSCFA Area continues to experience short delays in processing applications. All applications received up to 4th September 2018 have been processed. The delays have arisen as a result of a combination of initial technical issues, which have now been resolved, and a very high volume of new applications received since the beginning of July. However, I can assure you that all outstanding claims are being dealt with expeditiously.