Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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712. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if an applicant who pays extra costs for a spouse in a nursing home on the nursing home support scheme can have these costs disregarded in a means test for fuel allowance; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [55292/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Fuel Allowance is a payment of €33 per week for 28 weeks (a total of €924 each year) from late September to April, at an estimated cost of €366 million in 2022. The purpose of this payment is to assist these households with their energy costs.

Fuel Allowance operates as part of an overall system of social protection supports which provides assistance payments based on a system of means testing. The means test ensures that the recipient has a verifiable income need and that resources are targeted to those who need them most.

By its nature, the means test takes account of the income a person or couple has in terms of cash, property - other than the family home - and capital. It does not take account of a person’s expenditure commitments or income tax circumstances.

Allowing deductions in means assessed for outgoings such as costs associated with nursing home care would significantly increase the complexity of the means assessment and would give rise to inconsistencies in how means tests are applied across schemes.

In the case where one person (who is part of a married/cohabiting couple, or in a civil partnership) goes into a nursing home for longer than 13 weeks, the Fuel Allowance means test allows for the means of the couple to be divided by two and the single person disregard is applied.

If a person in receipt of Fuel Allowance and getting paid for a qualified adult who has no entitlement to a social welfare payment in his/her own right moves into a nursing home on a full-time basis, the Fuel Allowance payment may continue.

Finally, the Department of Social Protection provides Additional Needs Payments as part of the Supplementary Welfare Allowance scheme for people who have an urgent need which they cannot meet from their own resources. These payments are available through our Community Welfare Officers.

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.