I am glad the Deputy brought this matter up. Due to the child maintenance review that was carried out, I have changed the legislation so that from the beginning of this month, child maintenance is no longer taken into consideration as part of the means test. A person does not have to go to court to prove what he or she is getting or not getting. All of that is being disregarded and one-parent families are now able to make their claim without the need for recourse to the courts. That maintenance is for the children …

I thank Deputy Murphy. The PRSI system plays a fundamental and supportive role in our society. For the PRSI contributions they make, employees and self-employed workers receive benefits for the periods spent out of employment during periods of unemployment, illness or maternity, for example, and upon retirement from the workforce. One of the findings of the latest actuarial review of the Social Insurance Fund was that the fund will experience significant long-term sustainability challenges. This is mainly driven b…

If the Deputy wants to keep the pension age at 66, he should realise it has to be paid for. That is the reality. Sometimes he is a bit detached from reality. With him, it is usually a case of spend, spend, spend on the grounds that somebody else can pay for it. That is how he operates. He got his answer at the weekend. People are not buying his view. The Government parties won over 500 seats and his political grouping won 13. That tells him all he needs to know. These are very modest increases. There is an increase…

The recently agreed PRSI rate increases, although still very significantly under the EU average, achieve a fair balance between addressing the long-term sustainability of the Social Insurance Fund and maintaining the State pension age at 66. The proposal is not unduly impinging on the incomes of workers and the cost of doing business in Ireland. There is a very simple point that I believe the Deputy missed. If you keep piling all the costs on the employers, their businesses may not survive, meaning we will have no …

I thank the Deputy for raising the matter. The social welfare appeals office is an office of the Department of Social Protection which is responsible for determining appeals against decisions in respect of social welfare entitlements. Appeals officers are independent in their decision-making functions. The office is currently finalising its annual report for 2023, with the data showing that the overall average processing time for an appeal was 16 weeks. For an appeal decided without an oral hearing, the average pro…

To tell the truth, my constituency office staff also use the appeal line for TDs and representatives. We all deal with social welfare appeals in our constituency offices. What happens in the vast majority of cases, as we know, is that not all the medical information is provided at the start and the application is turned down. Once that happens, you are into review and appeals. The reviews can be quicker but I do accept that we need to do more to make the appeals process work better for people. Deputy Stanton also r…

I will increase the income disregards for carers and this will kick in next week. It will be increased. It is important that we do this. It is part of the budget and it is starting next week. The online service we are putting together is a new process. Online applications will be quicker than paper applications. It will be like the passport service. The online service is very quick, in fairness to the Passport Office. A few years ago we were looking at long delays for passports. The online system has managed to cha…

I thank the Deputy for raising this. 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, 2,600 schools and organisations covering 443,000 children are eligible for funding. The hot school meal option of the programme was intr…

When I announced the expansion, I was very keen that all special schools would be included. I am not all over the detail of St. Anne's special school but I would say to the school authorities to engage with the Department and have that conversation. If they could do that, we will see where it takes us. I am not over the specific detail there. What I want to do is try to make sure the children get a hot school meal. We have the arrangement where we provide the funding to the school and it is up to the school to iden…

The nutritional standards applying to the school meals programme were developed by a working group led by the health and well-being programme in the Department of Health in consultation with Safefood and the healthy eating and active living programme in the HSE. Schools and organisations must reapply for funding in advance of each school year and are required to submit detailed records. We want to maintain high standards and we want children to have nutritional food. Reports are sent in and expenditure on unhealthy…

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. As Minister for Social Protection, I am fully committed to making the case for a fair budget that protects the people most in need in our society, particularly families on low incomes and those people, including pensioners and carers, who are dependent on social welfare payments. As part of budget 2024, I secured a €2.3 billion social protection package. This was, for the second year in a row, the largest in the history of the State. This package provided a mixture of lump…

Well, I will have to give the Deputy the facts again. Consistent poverty and at-risk poverty have fallen. The 2023 national consistent poverty rate is 3.6%. This equates to 185,385 people, down from 4.9% in 2022, and 4.2% in 2021. This is the lowest rate of consistent poverty recorded since the start of the SILC survey. It puts the Government on track to meet the ambitious target set out in the roadmap for social inclusion of 2%. In 2023, the at-risk rate of poverty was 10.6%. This equates to 545,856 people. This i…

No, I am not.

Regarding these lump sum payments, when people have ESB and heating bills in the winter, people need the money in their pockets then. There is no point in increasing the weekly rate. We need to get the money to them then to pay the bills. It has actually been shown that these once-off, or lump sum, payments have been very effective in dealing with the increase in the cost of living that was experienced. The 2023 SILC showed that social transfers continued to perform well in reducing the at-risk of poverty rate from…

I thank Deputy Stanton for raising this issue. The social welfare appeals office is an office of the Department of Social Protection which is responsible for determining appeals against decisions in relation to social welfare entitlements. Appeals officers are independent in their decision-making functions. The social welfare appeals system is underpinned by Chapter 2 of Part 10 of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 and the Social Welfare (Appeals) Regulations 1998 - SI 108 of 1998. Under the legislation, th…

I do not think I have the figure here about how long the oldest case is there, but I will get it for the Deputy. It is complicated enough and perhaps not that many people are familiar with this process, but it kicks in whenever a person provides new information. When an appeal is decided, if a person has new information, the application goes back in again and it is looked at with a fresh set of eyes. It is not influenced by any other decision that has been made; the whole file is looked at by a different person. Th…

In fairness to the Department, it generally does tell people what options are available to them. If an appellant is unhappy with the decision of an appeals officer, he or she may seek a review of the decision under section 317 of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act, provided there are new facts or evidence that were not before the appeals officer who made the original decision. A further remedy is available to appellants through section 318, whereby the chief appeals officer can revise the decision of an appeals o…

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. In recent years, entry to the school meals programme had been confined to DEIS schools in addition to schools identified by the Department of Education as having levels of concentrated disadvantage that would benefit from access to the programme. In budget 2022, I provided funding for all DEIS schools currently in the programme. In July 2022, I announced that I was extending hot school meals to the new DEIS schools announced by the Department of Education. This provided ac…

We wrote a second time to the approximately 1,000 schools that did not respond to us in the first call. Some 600 have come back and we will work with them. We will continue to approach the remaining schools. Obviously, I will need to secure more money in the budget this year to complete the roll-out of the programme. My plan is that all primary school children will have access to a hot lunch during the course of 2025. The programme is very important and is making such a difference to the children. Teachers think it…

Currently, DEIS secondary schools have access to the school meals programme. I wanted to start with primary schools. As soon as that roll-out is finished, I hope the Minister for Social Protection in the next Government, whoever that may be, will start to roll out the provision to all secondary schools as well. It is the right thing to do. I have been absolutely committed to the school meals programme since I came into the Department. I am delighted the roll-out will soon be finished in primary schools. I always fe…