I propose to take Questions Nos. 27, 31, 32, 54 and 57 together.
The free schemes such as the free electricity allowance, the free telephone rental allowance and the free TV licence are available to people, usually aged 66 or over, who are in receipt of a welfare type payment and who are either living alone or who otherwise satisfy this condition. In addition, widows and widowers between the ages of 60 and 65, whose late spouses had been in receipt of the free schemes, retain that entitlement.
One of the qualifying conditions of the free electricity allowance scheme is that the applicant must be living alone or living only with certain excepted people. People in receipt of unemployment benefit or assistance do not qualify as excepted people and there are no plans to expand the number of excepted categories to include recipients of unemployment payments.
The range of the free schemes currently available does not include assistance towards the cost of cable television charges.
As announced in the budget, people in receipt of invalidity pension, disability allowance and blind person's pension who transfer to certain other social welfare pensions, for example, widow's and widower's contributory pensions, will retain their entitlement to the free schemes. This measure will extend the current arrangement which allows only for invalidity pensioners who transfer either to retirement pension at age 65 or to widow's or widower's contributory pension at age 60 or over, to retain their free schemes.
The free travel scheme is available to all people living in the State aged 66 years or over, as well as to certain people with disabilities under that age who are in receipt of certain welfare-type payments. The purpose of the scheme is to encourage such people to remain active in the community by providing them with access to spare capacity on a range of services provided by the CIE group of companies as well by 56 private transport operators who also participate in the scheme.
I have no plans to extend the free travel scheme to include taxi services. However, as Deputies may know, licensed private transport operators participate in the free travel scheme and the Department will consider further applications from this group.
The individual proposals raised by the Deputies would involve additional expenditure which could be considered only in a budgetary context.