Vol. 546 No. 3
44 Mr. J. O'Keeffe asked the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs his views on whether it is fair to pensioners, particularly those who cannot readily access telephone land lines, to be excluded from the free telephone rental allowance; and if he will amend the regulations in this regard. [31629/01]
The telephone allowance scheme administered by my Department covers line and instrument rental and calls to the value of £1.90 or 2.41 in each two-monthly billing period. The scheme will benefit some 224,000 people this year at an estimated cost of £44.2 million or 56.12 million. These figures demonstrate the huge success of the scheme in catering for the needs of the target groups at which the scheme is aimed.
Under present arrangements appropriate credits are applied directly to the relevant customer accounts with Eircom, in respect of land-lines only. Mobile phones are not at present covered under the scheme.
The operation of the existing arrangements involves the handling and exchange of significant amounts of data for claim processing, account authorisation, crediting of customer accounts and the discharge of the Department's liabilities to operators whose customers benefit under the arrangements. The extension of coverage to include mobile phones, and other telephone service providers under the new deregulated telecommunications market, would require companies interested in participating in these arrangements to invest in database developments and, possibly, to assign extra staff to handle the business.
