Vol. 430 No. 6
27 Mr. Connor asked the Minister for Social Welfare if he will consider reducing to 55 years the qualifying age for widows and widowers who live alone or with qualified children for entitlement to pension fringe benefits, that is, free electricity allowance, living alone allowance, where appropriate, free telephone rental allowance and the free public transport travel allowance.
The free schemes to which the Deputy refers are available, subject to certain conditions, to people aged 66 years and over and to incapacitated people in receipt of social welfare type payments in respect of their incapacity. The question of extending those schemes to certain categories of persons aged 55 years and over would give rise to additional expenditure and, therefore, would be one for consideration in a budgetary context.
I should mention that the current annual cost of the schemes mentioned by the Deputy is about £94 million. The additional cost of extending those schemes to persons who are 55 years and over, who are receiving a widow's pension or lone parent's allowance from my Department and who are either living alone or with exempted persons is estimated to be of the order of £8.4 million a year.
