Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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253. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the number of claims submitted and the number of persons who have received enhanced illness benefit for Covid-19; the number of persons who were in payment for ten weeks; the number of persons who transferred to illness benefit after the ten-week payment period had expired; the number of these claims that were in payment for more than two weeks, four weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks or in excess of 12 weeks, respectively; the number that were transferred to disability allowance; the number of such claims that were rejected or pending; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [62919/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Enhanced Illness Benefit (EIB) was a form of Illness Benefit that is payable to self-employed persons or an employee who is told to self-isolate or has been diagnosed with Covid-19. The enhanced rate of Illness Benefit came to an end on Friday 30 September 2022.

It is important to note that a person may have received Enhanced Illness Benefit on more than one occasion since the payment was introduced, and thus have more than one claim for Enhanced illness Benefit. EIB was payable for up to 10 weeks where a person was diagnosed with Covid-19. In a case where a person continues to be ill beyond 10 weeks, standard Illness Benefit may be paid for an extended period, based on the person’s continued eligibility.

Based on claim certification dates, there were 7,756 EIB claims with a duration of 10 weeks or more. Of the claims with a total certification period of 10 or more weeks, these relate to 5,855 individuals of whom 4,203 transferred to Illness Benefit payments, and were certified for 2 or more weeks. The duration of these illness benefit claims are set out in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Duration of Illness Benefit claims for those who transferred from EIB

119 individuals who had at least one EIB claim of more than 10 weeks duration are now in receipt of Disability Allowance. A total of 97 people had a Disability Allowance claim rejected, while 48 people had Disability Allowance claims pending as of end-November 2022.