Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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457. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the estimated cost of increasing the assessable income limit for fuel allowance means test by 10% for a single person under 80, single person over 80, for a couple in circumstances in which the qualified adult is aged under 66 or a couple in which the qualified adult is aged 66 or over in tabular form. [48144/21]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Fuel Allowance is a payment of €28.00 per week for 28 weeks (a total of €784 each year) from October to April, to 370,000 low income households, at an estimated cost of €300 million in 2021. The purpose of this payment is to assist these households 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.

Taking account of the fact that the fuel allowance is a household based payment and that qualification is not just based on the means test but on a number of other complex qualifying criteria such as household composition, it is not possible for my Department to provide an accurate projection of the potential cost of the measures outlined by the Deputy. My Department also does not maintain records across all schemes of the amount by which unsuccessful fuel applicants are over the income threshold. It is also worth noting that many people above the existing income threshold do not make an application.

Any decision to extend the eligibility criteria for Fuel Allowance by increasing the allowable means would have to be considered in the context of overall budgetary negotiations.

Under the Supplementary Welfare Allowance scheme, Exceptional Needs Payments may be made to help meet an essential, once-off cost which customers are unable to meet out of their own resources, and this may include exceptional heating costs. Decisions on such payments are made on a case-by-case basis.