Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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296. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she will consider facilitating a return to fortnightly social protection payments for persons that collect payments at post offices; and if such persons make such a request on the basis of ensuring that they may be allowed to take all reasonable precautions to avoid presenting themselves at post offices in person in order to adhere to public health guidelines and increase their chances to avoid crowded scenarios. [29707/20]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Fortnightly payments were introduced by my Department to assist with social distancing measures in the context of the current pandemic.

Within any particular scheme, it is not possible to introduce different payment cycles for different individuals or for different categories of individual. All payments on each scheme, whether by collecting cash at the post office or depositing money directly into someone’s bank account, have to be processed in the same way.

Some schemes reverted to a weekly pattern in August.

I met with An Post and the Irish Postmasters Union in recent weeks. I have also listened to concerns expressed by groups such as St Vincent De Paul around the difficulties presented to our customers, including our most vulnerable, in trying to manage money on a fortnightly basis.

In this context, I announced earlier this week that all weekly social welfare payments which had been moved to a fortnightly schedule from the end of March will be fully restored to being paid weekly with effect from Monday, 2nd November 2020.

It should be noted that the period of time in which cash payments have to be collected at post offices has been considerably extended. The purpose of this change is to allow people the choice of continuing to collect payments on a fortnightly basis should they so wish in order to minimise the number of times they attend and queue in banks or post offices.

If any person has received an expired payments letter, they should contact my Department so that their social welfare payment can be reinstated.

For the duration of the pandemic, alternative payment arrangements, such as the option to have one’s payment made directly into a current account by electronic fund transfer (EFT), are accommodated at the request of a customer to the Department. This allows for the payment to be paid directly into a current account in any financial institution, whether that be with An Post, a bank or a credit union. An Post has been kept informed of this initiative.

Finally, the rules around nominating agents to collect social welfare payments at post offices have also been changed to allow for more agent collections, whereby customers can nominated a trusted individual to collect a payment on their behalf.