The national fuel scheme assists certain householders who are in receipt of long-term social welfare or health board payments and who are unable to provide for their own heating needs. A payment of £5 per week is paid to eligible households during the Fuel Allowance heating season, which runs for 26 weeks of each year from mid-October to mid-April. An additional £3 per week smokeless fuel allowance is payable during the heating season to fuel recipients in Dublin, Cork and, from October 1998, Limerick, Wexford, Arklow, Dundalk and Drogheda. This extra allowance is to assist recipients in meeting the increased costs of buying smokeless fuel in urban areas where there is a ban on the sale of bituminous coal for environmental reasons.
There are some 97,000 pensioners over the age of 66 in receipt of a fuel allowance and the estimated cost of giving them a once off grant of £28 each would be £2.7 million. This could only be considered in a budgetary context.
However, there is a facility available through the supplementary welfare allowance scheme to assist people in certain circumstances who have special heating needs. This operates in addition to the national fuel scheme. Under the SWA scheme, a person who has exceptional heating costs due to ill health or infirmity may qualify for a heating supplement. This can be paid as a weekly supplement in addition to other social welfare payments. An application for a heating supplement may be made by contacting the Community Welfare Officer at the local health centre.
Where a person would not normally qualify for a heating supplement there is provision under the SWA scheme to pay an Exceptional Needs Payment. The purpose of ENPs is to help prevent hardship by providing for essential, once-off, exceptional expenditure, which applicants could not reasonably be expected to meet out of their weekly income. ENPs are payable at the discretion of the health board taking into account the requirements of the legislation and all the relevant circumstances of the case. These facilities under the SWA scheme are already in place and are a more appropriate mechanism to meet the needs of those who are experiencing financial difficulties due to the exceptionally cold weather experienced after the end of this year's fuel allowance heating season.