Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein)
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932. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the estimated cost of providing school meals to every primary school where there is established deprivation but no DEIS classification, by county, in tabular form. [57349/23]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The objective of the School Meals Programme is to provide regular, nutritious food to children to support them in taking full advantage of the education provided to them. The programme is an important component of policies to encourage school attendance and extra educational achievement. Following the expansion of the programme in recent years, some 2,600 schools and organisations, covering 443,000 children are now eligible for funding.

My department does not measure or collect information on deprivation at school level, so it is not possible to provide the estimates requested.

I am committed to continuing to expand the School Meals Programme and building further on the significant extension of the programme that has taken place in recent years. As part of this significant expansion plan, all non-DEIS primary schools were contacted last year and requested to submit an expression of interest form if their school is interested in commencing the provision of hot school meals.

Expressions of interests were received from over 900 primary schools in respect of 150,000 children and late last year these schools were invited to participate in the Hot School Meals Programme from April 2024. There will be an opportunity for the other primary schools who had subsequently expressed an interest, to do so formally during this year.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the deputy.

Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein)
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933. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she will provide a list of the total number of children who have received the back-to-school payment to date; the number of children who are expected to receive the payment in the coming weeks; and the total amount spent on this allowance to date, in tabular form. [57351/23]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance scheme provides a once-off payment to eligible families to assist with the costs of clothing and footwear when children start or return to school each autumn.

The allowance is payable in respect of eligible children between the ages of 4 and 17 in respect of whom a qualified child allowance is being paid, and eligible children between the ages of 18 and 22 who are in full-time second level education and in respect of whom a qualified child allowance is being paid.

The scheme operates from June to September each year. The 2023 Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance scheme closed to new applications on 30September 2023.

Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance payments totaling €86.07m have issued to 154,019 households in respect of 274,114 qualified children.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.

Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein)
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934. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the estimated cost of introducing a permanent ISL voucher scheme. [57353/23]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Section 9 of the Irish Sign Language (ISL) Act, 2017 assigns responsibility to the Minister for Social Protection to provide funds to facilitate users of Irish Sign Language to access social, educational and cultural events and services (including medical) and other activities.

I have assigned the implementation of these responsibilities to the Citizens Information Board (CIB), the statutory body under the aegis of my Department. CIB in turn has assigned the delivery of this work to its Service Delivery Company, the Sign Language Interpreting Service (SLIS).

In 2021, CIB and SLIS launched a pilot project, supported by the Department of Social Protection, which involved the creation of a “Voucher Scheme” in line with Section 9 of the ISL Act.

Following this successful pilot, the Department was delighted to see SLIS commence the Voucher Scheme on a permanent basis on 2nd October 2023. Findings from the pilot project's evaluation informed the design and roll out of the permanent Scheme.

As part of CIB’s allocated funding from the Department for 2024, CIB has allocated €400,000 to SLIS to provide the Voucher Scheme for a 12 month period in 2024. This funding is in addition to the sanctioning by CIB of a full-time Administrator in SLIS for the operation of the Voucher Scheme.

The ISL Voucher Scheme allows individuals to request ISL interpretation services to meet their needs in respect of access to social, cultural and education activities and is an important step in the implementation of the ISL Act 2017. I am firmly committed to supporting and funding this Scheme into the future, in line with my responsibilities under the ISL Act.

I trust this clarifies your query.

Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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936. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection in relation to the estimated additional cost of implementing the Green Paper on Disability Reform that was indicated as €130 million by a person (details supplied) on 25 October 2023 at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Social Protection, Community and Rural Development and the Islands, if she will give a detailed breakdown of what this estimated additional spend will consist of. [1005/24]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Green Paper on Disability Reform addresses my department’s commitment under the Roadmap for Social Inclusion to develop and consult on proposals to restructure long-term disability payments and to simplify the system.

The Green Paper’s main proposal is to introduce a new long-term, three-tiered disability payment with associated employment supports. This new payment would merge the long-term disability payments of Disability Allowance, Blind Pension, and Invalidity Pension into a single payment.

Under tier 1, people who cannot supplement their income with work would receive a higher payment rate set at the State Pension Contributory rate. People with the greatest capacity to work would be assigned to tier 3. They would remain on the current Disability Allowance rate and would be offered employment supports appropriate to their needs. People with a more limited capacity to work would be placed into tier 2 and their payment would be half-way between the other two tiers.

The estimated costs of this proposed scheme are based on the additional weekly payments that people in tiers 1 and 2 would receive and are not related to the cost of administering the scheme. To estimate the distribution of people across the proposed tiers, my department’s medical assessors carried out an analysis of 1,000 applications which were successful in being awarded Disability Allowance and notionally assigned them into tier 1, 2 or 3 based on the bio-psycho-social model of assessment. The proportion of those 1,000 people assigned to each tier was extrapolated to the entire population of people on the three disability payments. The additional costs of the proposed three-tiered payment were estimated as the proportion of people who would be assigned to tier 1 and tier 2 multiplied by the additional payment they would receive per week.

Based on 2024 rates, these measures would cost an additional €153 million each year. These new measures would cost an additional €117.48 million for those previously on Disability Allowance, €34.48 million for those on Invalidity Pension and an additional €0.75 million for those on Blind Pension.

Note, these estimations only account for the current number of people in receipt of disability payments and do not propose to estimate the number of new entrants onto the schemes.

Nobody will lose their payment or have their payment reduced based on the Green Paper proposals. Those assigned to tier 3 will retain their current payment rate. The objective is to increase people’s payments and provide more employment supports for those who can and want to work.

The Green Paper is designed for public consultation and no final decisions have been made. It offers one possible approach on how to target limited resources – its proposals are intended to invite discussion, debate, and suggestions.

I encourage all those with an interest to express their views in our public consultation by making a submission in writing or by video. It is essential that we hear from as many disabled people and representatives as possible. I have extended the consultation period until 15 March 2024 to ensure everyone has adequate time to make a submission.

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.