Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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574. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection further to Parliamentary Question No. 323 of 12 October 2021, if the part-time job incentive scheme will be included as an eligible scheme for the fuel allowance (details supplied); if not, the reason the scheme is not to be an eligible payment for fuel allowance; her views on whether it should be included moving forward; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [52044/21]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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As I outlined in my previous reply to the Deputy, qualifying payments for fuel allowance are those payments that are considered long-term payments and an applicant must also satisfy a means test.

Participants on the Part-Time Job Incentive Scheme (PTJI) are not means tested and they receive a fixed weekly allowance. This weekly allowance is paid regardless of how much a person earns. A person on Jobseeker's Allowance would, of course, be means tested on earnings from employment.

In the majority of cases a participant will remain on the PTJI scheme for only 12 months. Accordingly, it is not a long-term scheme and any proposal to include it as an eligible scheme for the fuel allowance would have to be considered in the context of overall budgetary negotiations.

If a person on the PTJI scheme is having difficulty with exceptional heating costs s/he may seek help from my Department. Under the Supplementary Welfare Allowance scheme, Exceptional Needs Payments may be paid 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.

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.