Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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159. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the estimated cost to increase the fuel allowance to €38 per week for the 2024-2025 period; and the average time to process a new application for fuel allowance. [30054/24]

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 €382 million in 2024. The purpose of this payment is to assist these households with their energy costs. Only one allowance is paid per household.

At the end of December 2023, 411,395 household were in receipt of the Fuel Allowance payment. Based on similar numbers of households qualifying for the Fuel Allowance Payment during the 2024/25 fuel season, the estimated cost of increasing the fuel allowance payment to €38 per week for the 2024-2025 period, an increase of €5 per week, over the course of a 28-week Fuel Season is as follows: -

The provision of any additional supports such as increasing the weekly rate of the Fuel Allowance would have cost implications and could only be considered while taking account of the overall budgetary context and the availability of financial resources.

The Fuel Allowance is paid, in conjunction with primary social welfare schemes, across a number of IT systems with differing functionality for recording processing activity, and consequently precise information on processing timelines for applications is not available.

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.