Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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323. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she is satisfied that all possible requests have been met to date based on the qualification requirements in the context of Covid-19 related payments; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [5748/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Two specific Covid -19 related income support payments have been introduced since 2020 - the Pandemic Unemployment Payment and Covid (Enhanced) Illness Benefit.

The Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) was introduced as one of a number of measures to provide income support to those who had lost their employment as a result of COVID. To date, over 870,000 people have received payment under the scheme at a cost of €9 billion and over 28 million payments have issued.

The PUP scheme closed to new applications on 8 July 2021.

The PUP scheme re-opened from 7 December 2021 to support persons who had lost their income from employment on or after that date as a result of the decision to temporarily impose restrictions on the trading of certain business sectors to slow the spread of COVID. These restrictions had a particular impact on sectors such as hospitality, the night-time economy, and the arts and entertainment sectors.

The re-opening of the PUP scheme was specifically targeted at persons who were directly affected by the trading restrictions introduced on 7 December 2021. It did not involve a general re-opening of the scheme. The PUP scheme subsequently closed on 22 January 2022 following the lifting of restrictions on that date.

Just over 48,000 individuals benefitted from the re-opening of the PUP scheme since 7 December. Processing of claims is up to date. Where a person did not qualify or supplied insufficient information to enable a decision on their claim, they were notified of this. Where a person subsequently contacted my Department to query the non-payment of their claim, follow-up action took place. Currently, there are no processing backlogs.

COVID (Enhanced) Illness Benefit is a scheme that was introduced in March 2020, to support people who are incapable of work or who are required to self-isolate, as a result of a COVID diagnosis or being a probable source of infection. To date a total of 416,175 COVID Illness Benefit related claims have been processed of which 382,587 have received a payment.

The majority of the standard Illness Benefit claims are automatically processed once medical certification from a GP and an application from the customer has been received.

Applications for COVID Enhanced Illness Benefit increased significantly during January due to transmission of the Omicron variant. 92% of these applications are processed within a week. Applications that require officer review to ensure eligibility for payment can take longer to process. My officials are working to clear all claims as quickly as possible with additional resources allocated to this work as a priority.

If the Deputy has a particular case which he wishes to query, my officials are available to assist.