What I am saying is that I will not be found wanting, depending on the Labour Court outcome. We have to hear what it has to say. These people, as the Deputy knows, are set up in such a way that they are not employees of my Department. That probably emanates from voluntary boards many years ago. That is the way it is, so we have to go through the process. The Labour Court will make its finding, and I assure the Deputy that, whatever that is, I will not be found wanting in trying to resolve the issue. I agree with th…

The war in Ukraine has resulted in the largest humanitarian effort in the State's history. Ireland has responded to the war with a co-ordinated, whole-of-government response and has provided protection and support to those who have had to flee from the violence in Ukraine. More than 106,000 people have arrived in the State since the European Council unanimously adopted the implementing decision regarding the temporary protection directive in March 2022. In October 2023, the EU Council agreed to extend the period of…

The extension of the directive, which expires in March 2025, as I said to the Deputy, is a matter for the Minister for Justice. She is discussing that and we will decide that as part of an EU response. I have already signalled that I do not think it is sustainable long-term that people would get their accommodation provided for and receive full social welfare payments. We will look at that. It is not a decision I can make on my own. There have to be discussions with party leaders. We need to make a decision as a Go…

As the Deputy said, that does not come under my remit. I will have to raise that issue with the relevant Minister and ask him or her to come back to the Deputy on it. I have to remind the Deputy that he and colleagues of his have said in the past that not only should Ukrainians get full social welfare payments but all refugees arriving in this country should get the same treatment. That is in stark contrast to what he is saying to me today. Is this a change in approach from Sinn Féin? I saw the video he did outside…

I have also seen some of the Sinn Féin election leaflets referring to open borders. We are an island. The only open border we have is with Northern Ireland, and I do not think the Deputy would suggest we have a hard border with Northern Ireland because, in fairness, we put in a huge amount of work-----

-----and a huge effort during Brexit to make sure we would not have such a hard border.

We know what we heard from Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson on Brexit, "It is time to take back our borders", and we know where that ended up, so we need to be very careful here.

I thank Deputy Tully for raising this matter. As she will be aware, one of the main ideas in the Green Paper I published for consultation last year was to consolidate disability allowance, blind pension and invalidity pension into one single payment. I sought people's views on an approach to providing additional support to those most in need by increasing payments for those people with the most profound challenges and, in so doing, to also address some inconsistencies between the payments. In line with our obligati…

I agree with the Deputy's initial question. There are too many different payments trying to do the same thing, whether it is disability allowance, invalidity pension, blind pension or partial capacity benefit. Sometimes people are on long-term illness benefit. For children there is domiciliary care allowance. The Green Paper, in fairness, was trying to put a more unified and coherent approach to this so that everybody would receive what would be known as a personal support payment. That is what the proposal in the …

That is what I am trying to do and what the Green Paper was trying to do, but people were not happy with it. I listened to their concerns. There is a lot of information and we did a lot of consultation during the Green Paper when it was published. We will take lessons from those too. There is now a Cabinet committee and I know there will be a huge focus on this. We have to come together and work together. The organisations representing the disability groups also have to come up with their ideas and solutions and we…

The social welfare appeals office is an office of the Department of Social Protection which is responsible for determining appeals against decisions relating to social welfare payments. Appeals officers are independent in their decision-making functions. Between 2014 and the end of March 2024, 241,019 disability allowance claims were received by the Department. Those figures are for ten years. Between 2014 and the end of March 2024, 24% of claim decisions or 58,485 disability allowance appeals were received in the …

The figures were for a ten-year period during which 69% of appeals were subsequently allowed or partially allowed. We are not trying to block people from getting their payments. That is not what I am trying to do. That is not true. Look at the statistics. The number of people receiving disability allowance has increased massively in recent years. Slightly more than 100,000 people were getting disability allowance in 2014. Today more than 158,000 people receive it. That is a 50% increase in the number of people rece…

Deputy Bruton is absolutely right. I also see that in my office. Much of the medical information is not put down. It is on the provision of further medical information that the payment is granted. We have done a lot for carers. A pension scheme has been introduced for long-term carers. The carer's support grant has been increased to its highest ever level. The weekly carer's payment has been increased by €29 in the past three years. Carers were prioritised in all the cost-of-living lump sum payments. I have made si…

-----that from June a couple will be able to have weekly earnings of €900 and €50,000 in savings and still qualify for the full carer's allowance payment.

An interdepartmental group has been set up to examine what further work we can do on the means test. I assure Deputies that I am committed to working with our carers to continue to give them support in carrying out the valuable work they do.

The Department's activation and family support programme provides funding to assist local organisations and agencies to implement training and education initiatives to address the needs of recipients of welfare payments and their families who are distant from the labour market. The programme is demand-led and is designed to fund one-off projects in response to local customer needs, as identified by local organisations. Applications for co-funding are made to a Department employment personal adviser. Programmes cove…

I thank the Deputy. The activation support programme provides funding to local organisations and agencies to implement training and education initiatives. It is focused on the needs of social welfare recipients, and their families, who are very distant from the labour market. There is a plethora of other initiatives that help people to get back into the labour force. The Department makes a number of grants available to people who are long-term unemployed, or to employers, to help them to get back to work. I refer t…

The expenditure in Cork involved the provision of €59,000 to two organisations: the social and health education project, SHEP, and Cork Education and Training Board. SHEP is an Irish community education and development organisation based in Ballintemple, County Cork. It received funding towards the provision of its certificate of personal development in a number of locations in Cork. Cork Education and Training Board received funding in 2022 that related to its return-to-work programme, which was held in 2018 and 2…

The Government is committed to supporting older people to access timely, high-quality, person-centred and integrated care in the most appropriate setting and to support positive ageing across the life course. To this end, the Minister for Health and the Minister of State with responsibility for mental health and older people brought forward a proposal for the establishment of an independent commission on care for older people. The Government approved the proposal in October 2023 and in March of this year the Minist…

The Department has activation programmes. The level of unemployment among young people tends to be higher and we specifically want to focus on young people and on getting them back into the workforce. I visited Kilkenny yesterday and there was a jobs fair there. I have to say-----