Joint Committee on Social Protection, Community and Rural Development and the Islands debate -
Wednesday, 5 Jul 2023

Public Service Performance Report 2022: Department of Social Protection

An Cathaoirleach

The committee will now consider the public service performance report with officials from the Department of Social Protection, who are welcome.

In 2016, the OECD Review of budget oversight by parliament: Ireland highlighted the requirement to provide enhanced performance information to support the Oireachtas in assessing the outputs and outcomes from public expenditure. A challenge identified by the OECD in supporting the realisation of the goal relates to the timing of publication of the Revised Estimates Volume, REV. Owing to the fact the Revised Estimates are published prior to the end of the year, outturn information is not available for the current year and only targets can be published. Oireachtas committees do not therefore have relevant outturn information related to performance available to them in a timely fashion to enable them to scrutinise performance in the preceding year. The purpose of the performance report is to address this shortfall, as it provides timely information on what was delivered with public funds in the preceding year. Performance-based budgeting aims to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of public expenditure by linking the funding of public sector organisations to the results they deliver by making extensive use of performance information. The key output of this project is a framework to tag and track all areas of public expenditure across dimensions of equality, well-being, the sustainable development goals and green budgeting. In his remarks within the public service performance report, PSPR, the Secretary General notes the Department has ambitious plans to reform the pensions and working-age programme. This is something the committee endorses and we look forward to the forthcoming proposals on these matters.

I welcome the representatives from the Department of Social Protection, who are Mr. Niall Egan, assistant secretary general, corporate affairs, Mr. Alan Flynn, principal officer with responsibility for Estimates and EU funding compliance, and Mr. Dermot Corcoran, principal officer, business intelligence.

Before we start, I wish to explain some limitations to parliamentary privilege and the practice of the Houses as regards references witnesses may make to other persons in their evidence. The evidence of witnesses physically present or who give evidence from within the parliamentary precincts is protected pursuant to both the Constitution and statute by absolute privilege. Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not criticise nor make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in respect of an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative they comply with any such direction.

I call on Mr. Egan to make his opening statement.

Mr. Niall Egan

I thank the Chairman and members for the invitation to discuss the Public Service Performance Report 2022 and especially the elements of it related to the performance of the Department of Social Protection. This is the sixth year of publication of the report in its current format by colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform. The report is extensive and provides a high-level overview of performance across all Departments. As committee members will be well aware, the nature of the challenges facing different Departments varies widely, but nonetheless the report provides a common framework to present key statistics pertinent to the domains of the Departments in a clear and concise manner. In addition to its core performance budgeting focus on financial metrics, key output measures and focus on outcomes, the report has expanded in recent years, adding sections on equality budgeting, green budgeting, spending reviews, well-being and the sustainable development goals. Where relevant to the Department, we have tried to address all of these sections in the briefing, which was provided to the committee in advance.

As the Secretary General, Mr. John McKeon, set out in his introduction in our Department's section of the PSPR, 2022 was another eventful and busy year of service delivery for the Department. As Covid-19 pressures receded, departmental staff were faced with huge challenges in mobilising as part of the cross-Government and indeed whole-of-society response to challenges in supporting those arriving in Ireland from Ukraine. Almost €250 million in expenditure was provided to support 80,000 refugees fleeing war in Europe last year. The Department has also been to the fore in responding to the spike in the cost of living that followed from the war in Ukraine. Last year, the Department spent almost €25 billion, processed over 2 million applications and delivered over 85 million individual payments. A key factor in delivering this level of performance is the growth in the Department's digital platforms, with over 7 million transactions delivered through the Department's mywelfare.ie and welfarepartners.ie digital portals in 2022. This level of social protection expenditure was delivered throughout 2022 by the Department's staff via a mixture of weekly, periodic and once-off supports and is a critical social investment that supports people, families and communities and contributes significantly to social cohesion. The Department also continued throughout 2022 on developing policy reforms, as the Chair alluded to, in key areas including pensions, automatic enrolment, and pay-related benefit, to name a few. I acknowledge the hard work of my colleagues throughout the Department and thank them for it, as well that of our partners in supporting millions of people across the country, week in and week out throughout last year. The Department acknowledges we are not perfect and performance is closely monitored by the management team. We take action to redirect resources as necessary to meet challenging performance targets, as is regularly required in such a dynamic and fast-moving environment.

A core objective of the Department, as recognised in the PSPR, is the reduction of poverty. Social transfers continued to perform in reducing the at-risk-of-poverty rate in 2022. The Central Statistics Office, CSO's survey on income and living conditions for 2022 shows social transfers, excluding pensions, performed well in reducing the at-risk-of-poverty rate from 40.1% before social transfers to 13.1%. Ireland remains one of the best-performing EU states in reducing poverty through social transfers. However, in light of the most recent statistics we are of course conscious that we have more work to do in this regard.

Over the years, the Department has continued to work with colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform through representation on the PSPR steering and expert committees. Additional material has been added to the report, including equality budgeting statistics in the areas of jobless households and in relation to the ratio of paternity and maternity benefit claims. Both of these high-level goals are, thankfully, moving in the right direction in recent years. Work is continuing with officials from the Department working with colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform in recent weeks to tag budget lines in the Revised Estimate Volumes with both well-being and equality dimensions, which will no doubt facilitate development of further central reports and information dimensions to the PSPR in future. Beyond the PSPR, the Department publishes a range of statistics in its long-standing annual report, annual statistical report and other publications. Another innovation in this space in the Department's quarterly statistical reports, which have been made available online since 2021. These provide a regular quarterly heartbeat for key statistics and is available to all via the Department's website.

The broad overview I have presented of social protection performance in 2022 is developed in detail in the briefing material provided to the committee. There is little doubt but that 2023 has brought continuing challenges for social protection and the Department aims to provide an agile, flexible and collaborative response to those pressures. I am proud the Department has demonstrated its ability and flexibility to effectively support the most vulnerable, as evidenced in the past few years in particular, and it is our aim to continue to do so into the future. I look forward to hearing the committee's views and welcome any questions members have for me or for my colleagues.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank Mr. Egan for the submission and evidence. Deputy Ó Laoghaire is first.

Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire

I thank the Department. It is fair to say the Department is not, by and large, one of the public bodies that has very significant problems with processing times, at least at present. There are some issues. I submitted a parliamentary question relatively recently on waiting times and it seems that of the centrally-processed schemes, the big outlier is probably disability allowance, for which the wait time is about ten weeks. I am not sure whether that can be worked down, but many of the wait times are in the region of four to seven weeks, as far as I can see from the statistics in front of me.

Probably the big one that stands out for me is not the centrally processed ones but supplementary welfare. The briefing note the witnesses sent us said that in relation to the supplementary payments programme area, which I presume is supplementary welfare, output targets were substantially achieved while key impact targets disimproved between 2021 and 2022. What is the difference between output targets and impact targets?

I was just checking this out a bit and I came across a case we were dealing with. I think they applied for funeral expenses in mid-March and only got the payment in June. Obviously, that is a substantial enough delay. We have probably come across other cases like that. It is a bit more complicated but it would seem to me that there are some delays in the supplementary welfare programme.

I had the opportunity to discuss this with the Department recently but I forgot to bring up this particular element of it. A lot of the work of supplementary welfare allowance seems to be handled by people at the rank of executive officer rather than higher executive officer, HEO, and who perhaps have less discretion to make decisions.

I have one further question but perhaps the witnesses can respond to the question on supplementary welfare.

Mr. Niall Egan

The first question I will take is the one on the difference between the output indicators and the impact indicators. In the structure of the Public Sector Programme Report, PSPR, the way we approached the output indicators in the Department is that they are very measurable. It is about claim load, the number of applications we make and pay, and the number of payments we have. They are defined. The impact indicators focus on the consequence of making those payments. Our impact indicators under each of the headings have focused on poverty-related statistics. With regard to the reference the Deputy quoted from the briefing material, while we are achieving our targets by and large across the board on the output indicators, on foot of the most recent survey on income and living conditions, SILC, 2022 data, there has been an increase in poverty levels. That is what that line in the briefing referred to. There are multiple reasons for that. It is the way poverty is measured but it is something, as I said in the opening statement, we are very conscious of in the Department.

Mr. Alan Flynn

Further to what Mr. Egan said, the PSPR for our Department is structured by the programmes. The naming could change over time but it can be seen as you look through it, it goes through: pensions; working age income and employment supports; illness, disability and carers income supports; income supports for children; and then supplementary payments. Those link very much back to the Revised Estimates Volume, REV, in how the programmes are structured. It is a naming convention but supplementary welfare allowance, which is the particular one the Deputy is asking about, is actually part of the working age portfolio of schemes, of which there are 20 or 30. It is a broad portfolio that covers things such as jobseeker's and treatment benefits as well as supplementary welfare allowance. However, the supplementary one is things like fuel allowance. It is sort of a hodgepodge of schemes at the end and that is why it is the last one. On the naming, “supplementary” is the programme and “supplementary welfare allowance” is within the working age space.

Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire

How it is categorised is grand but the issue still arises that there seem to be delays. Is there a plan to try to reduce that? Is some of that caused by the fact the workload of the HEOs is heavier than it used to be and executive officers now have to handle a bit more work than they used to?

Mr. Niall Egan

We put a huge focus over the past 12 months on our processing of additional needs payments, ANPs, which I think is what the Deputy is alluding to. We increased the number of staff supporting that, we have new channels available for customers to access ANPs, and we are seeing ANPs at a level higher than they were during the Covid years but comparable with 2018 and 2019. At the moment, we are processing ANPs, on average, in less than 13 days. The Deputy quoted a particular example of funeral expenses. I cannot comment on that particular case but I am happy to follow up with him afterwards.

Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire

It has been processed. I was just giving it as an example.

Mr. Niall Egan

I would say what happened there was additional information was required to process the claim. There was probably something outstanding. Obviously, without the detail, I cannot be sure of that.

An Cathaoirleach

Will Mr. Egan clarify one comment? He said the numbers of processed applications in 2018 were comparable with the current years except there was an anomaly during Covid. We are only back at comparable levels.

Mr. Niall Egan

Broadly speaking, yes.

Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire

I have one more question. Subsequent to a decision being arrived at, the claimant is entitled to seek a review. This is not widely enough known. I think more people should avail of it prior to going to the social welfare appeals office to pick up clerical errors and all that kind of stuff. Are there processing times for the reviews? I know there are probably not as many of them. Do we have a sense of how long it takes to get back to people with a review? Obviously, that has a knock-on impact.

Mr. Niall Egan

We do not have formal processing times for that administrative review. Typically, it is done quickly but it would depend on the area.

Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire

I have nothing to suggest the contrary; I am just curious.

Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív

I have two questions. Mr Egan said there was an increase in poverty. Would I be right in thinking that the cause of that is simple in that the social welfare payments did not keep in line with the rate of inflation? We can get all the statistics and facts but it all boils to a simple fact. People in real terms have less money for homes, cost-of-living costs, keeping themselves, cars and all the rest. I mean just keeping the car on the road that they had the previous year because we had 10% inflation. We had €12 increases. For example, if we take it on a working age payment, I think it went from €208 to €220, and the contributory pension went to €265. It rose €12. If taken as a percentage of €220 or €212 or €253, it is way less than the rate of inflation. Would that be a simple, global reason poverty would have increased?

We got caught out once in my office because we sought a review, and by the time the review took place, we went to appeal it and they tried to argue that the appeal was out of date. However, we always thought you got a decision, sought a review and did not bother the appeals office because you could get the review first, that it was a sequential operation. If the review was successful, that meant that the appeals office was not bureaucratically tied up in it. If it was unsuccessful, you then went to appeal. We need clarification about the process. In more recent times, I started going for review and appeal at the same time. I know it has caused trouble for bureaucracy but I am not going to get caught out with somebody telling me that we did not seek an appeal in good time when the thing was already in the Department.

Mr. Niall Egan

On the first question, the poverty rates I quoted are based on the SILC 2022 data. For the committee to be aware, the SILC 2022 data are based on income from 2021, from the period January to December 2021. They do not factor in any social welfare increases in budget 2022, budget 2023 or the once-off lump-sum payments at the end of last year. They are measuring poverty based on deprivation returns from surveys based in the first half of last year, but the income information is collated on the previous year. Therefore, there is a disconnect in the timing. Social welfare rates increased in 2021 but the reason poverty increased is because the median or midpoint income, which is how we measure the relative poverty, in Irish society increased, and in respect of people on fixed incomes, if their income had not increased by the same amount, if they were close to the threshold, they could have fallen into poverty. I think the Deputy’s point is still the same, but the time lag-----

Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív

It is even worse.

An Cathaoirleach

Could Deputy Ó Cuív pause for one second? I will bring him in. I am not bad with figures but I am getting my head around all that. Will Mr. Egan provide the committee with a note fleshing that out?

It would be useful in getting our heads around this.

Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív

What I am saying is the way I always see the world. It is about the recipient, the ordinary person who comes in to you, and what is happening to them. Inflation took off in 2021. We adjusted somewhat but we adjusted at 5% for an inflation rate of 10%. Wages are much more flexible, particularly in the private sector. They tend to go with the full inflation rate or near enough it. At the end of the day, I do not care, but to a point I just look at the absolute poverty level of people on the ground. Have they got the same buying power this year as last year? Any time inflation runs ahead, we should look at that, particularly for the things they buy like food and essentials, basic transport and whatever. It does not seem to be rocket science. You can have all the surveys and very sophisticated methodologies you want but when you think about it, a household will have a certain amount of money coming in in 2021 and the same thing in 2022 and so on. Any year that the cost of living goes up faster than the rise in the welfare rates, we are going backwards. The reason I am raising this issue is that there is a lot of talk about giveaway budgets but the first part of any rise in either tax credits or social welfare rates is only just catching up with inflation. If you are not catching up with inflation, you are losing. Therefore, there is no giveaway; it is a takeaway. That is the way I see it.

An Cathaoirleach

One or two of those aspects might be outside Mr. Egan's remit but I think the issues the Deputy has raised are very valid so I ask him to address them please.

Mr. Niall Egan

I agree with Deputy Ó Cuív on the issues he has raised. He is absolutely right. If social welfare rates do not keep pace with inflation, the consequences are as he articulated. However, the poverty rates here are a bit more nuanced than just inflation. What we witnessed in 2021 and 2022 was a big increase in employment as well. That would have also increased the median income. Coming out of the pandemic, more people would have seen their income rising as they went back to work. We started opening up the economy in 2021 on foot of the pandemic so that is also a factor here. We did increase social welfare rates in 2021 and social welfare rates are very effective at reducing poverty rates. Ours are some of the most effective in Europe at reducing poverty rates. I would agree with the principle of the point the Deputy is making but I would also point out that we have not factored in the measures we increased, which the Deputy referenced, such as the €12 increase and the cost-of-living lump sums. The analysis the ESRI did for last year showed that the lowest income households were protected through those measures from the cost of living and inflation.

Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív

You are chasing your tail when measuring against the median income. That is one of the things that always amazed me. To a point, in a booming economy, we will never catch up. People's lifestyles could be improving and poverty levels increasing all the time and on the other hand if there is a very deflated work market you could apparently have a lot more people getting the median income, or a percentage of the median income, and they might be a lot worse off if the economy was in decline and if welfare rates had not gone up. The people I represent who are on welfare, and they have come to me about this, are not worried so much about the median income. They are worried about their buying power. Why do we not measure poverty rates against their buying power, that is, against the basket of things people who are on social welfare generally buy? I am talking about people whose main income is social welfare. I am not talking about people who get contributory pensions and other very good incomes; there are plenty of those. I am talking about people who are social welfare dependent and very susceptible to poverty.

Mr. Niall Egan

There are three components to the way we measure poverty within Ireland. There is the median income component, which is the people at risk of poverty. If someone is below that level, they are at risk of poverty. Then there is deprivation, where people have to answer 11 questions such as if they can afford to replace a piece of furniture, afford to eat meat a number of times a week or afford a second winter coat or a second pair of shoes. They are questions like that and if they answer "No" to two of those questions they are categorised by the CSO as in deprivation. The overlap between those in deprivation and at risk of poverty leaves us with the measure of consistent poverty. The questions the Deputy is alluding to in terms of social welfare recipients and what they can afford would be picked up not just by the at risk of poverty level but by the deprivation questions that the CSO carries out.

Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív

A survey is subject to a person knowing the answer that is going to give them the best advantage. That is one thing but we can objectively measure people's buying power. We have all these baskets of what people buy. We know what they buy. When you average it out most people spend X amount on food, so much on clothing, so much on travel and so on. Do we measure the welfare income against those averages and do we produce those statistics?

Mr. Niall Egan

Last September, the Government gave a commitment that this year the Department of Social Protection would produce a report calculating figures using smoothed earnings, which is a buying power equivalent, showing what social welfare rates for State pensions would have to be indexed by in order to match a smoothed earnings approach. That will be submitted to the Government in September and will be an input into the budgetary process. We are going to start the process this year.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank Mr. Egan for his submissions. From a logistical point of view, it would be useful if we got them either in Word format or as PDFs rather than scanned documents. It is just easier for us to work with. From a logistical point of view, it would make it easier.

I have a number of questions about the documentation that is before us and I would like to go through those with Mr. Egan. This is probably one of the most important meetings this committee will hold this year, on the performance report. Mr. Egan will know from reading my contributions at previous meetings on Estimates, Revised Estimates and performance reports that I am quite critical of the statistics that are in front of us because I do not think they clearly reflect the activity within the Department. They are not useful to us as Members of the Oireachtas in terms of monitoring the spend. I would question the outputs that are measured. The average number weekly payments per month and the average monthly payments, and those reflected under each of the schemes, are of no use to us as a committee. Whether it meets a particular percentage or not is based on population and as the population increases or the number of older people increases, there are going to be more pension applications processed and payments made. In terms of providing a reflection of performance, it is of no benefit to us as members of the Oireachtas. We are told the targets are constantly under review but, as I have said consistently, there needs to be an engagement between the Department and this committee on the targets that are set out.

Deputy Ó Cuív articulated the issue of the impacts, and I will come to that in a minute, but there is also the matter of the outputs. We are measuring the wrong things when it comes to these figures being of use to us in delivering what we all want to achieve. It was made very clear to us by the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform yesterday that it is anxious that there would be actual engagement between the committee and the Department regarding the setting of these performance targets.

We as a committee are anxious to work with the Department on that. Maybe you could give us a timeline for this review process. When does it take place and how can the committee actively participate in it to ensure we are measuring something that benefits us as a committee in reflecting the activity within the Department and the use of that money? In fairness, this committee is in general very satisfied with the operation of the Department, so it is not the case that we are seeing the Department as falling down in the work it is doing, but we do not think that what has been presented to us clearly reflects what is going on within the Department. Maybe you could answer that first for me.

Mr. Niall Egan

We have 90 schemes. Working with the PSPR template and our colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, it is about finding that balance. We are limited in size like every Department is and we have other metrics we monitor ourselves for individual schemes. Trying to bring it up a level and trying to make it appropriate in terms of the high-level, overarching view of the different broad programme levels means that the output targets and the impact targets are set at a high level. We are absolutely happy to engage with the committee on its views, and I would be interested to hear its views and suggested ideas in that regard. The management board does review this in the Department every year and signs off on it. That process usually takes place in November, before the Revised Estimates are published, so we have between now and before November, to be honest, to feed into that process.

An Cathaoirleach

The point I am making is that the statistics are there. It is not that we are asking the Department to do something it is not doing already, but I think what has been presented to us is not reflective. For example, some of the statistics that would probably be extremely useful to us as a committee would be those relating to supplementary welfare allowance. That would be a level of statistics in terms of outputs that would be extremely useful to us because it shows across the Department some of the issues Deputy Ó Cuív talks about in terms of the actual impact that payments are having on people in respect of the number of applications that take place. That is just one off the top of my head. I accept the point you make about the timeline that is there and I know that makes it difficult. We are comparing apples and oranges, and I accept that that causes a problem, particularly when looking at median income, which, naturally enough, is dependent on the economy. You are right that the deprivation index, from our perspective, is probably a more useful tool as to what is happening on the ground. If, however, you go back to the performance report in 2019, the deprivation index under each category was reported. The deprivation index is now reported only in respect of retired people. I think the deprivation index would be a more useful measure, from our point of view, as a committee, in looking at this. Sorry - the working-age payment is the one I meant. The deprivation index used to be included in that and now it is not. The data are there.

Mr. Alan Flynn

I completely appreciate all those points. To make one point clear, we collate these returns and provide them to colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform annually and, as you can imagine, in a Department as large and diverse as ours, we pull lots of statistics together. You can see in this that there are three or four pages for the Department of Social Protection, and my colleague Mr. Corcoran publishes hundreds of pages of statistics in our annual report. It is a matter of trying to find a sweet spot between the two. We have been given in the format we provide back to our colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform a hard limit of ten lines in each programme area covering the sum of both the outputs and the impacts. You can see in each of these that we have seven or eight already. We are very happy to add lines as long as we fit within the ten-line limit. I think that is to keep the report consistent through all the Departments. The Department also publishes its annual statistical report and, as we alluded to in the briefing, the quarterly statistical report. Perhaps some of those places are where the real deep-dive statistics are. We cannot fit them in. We are happy to fill in up to the limit we can get to, but I am sure the Deputies will have many suggestions as to what would be a good figure to have in here. We will run out of room fairly quickly but we are very happy to engage with the committee on that.

An Cathaoirleach

I accept that this is a juggling measure the Department has to do in respect of the limit. The point I am making and made at the start is that the Department does have the statistics. Ultimately, however, this is supposed to ensure we are satisfied that the money being spent is being spent in an appropriate manner. The committee does believe that that is the case but we do not believe that the statistics being used here and the targets clearly reflect the activity from the Department's point of view such that that then makes it easy for us to measure how that is happening and whether it is improving or disimproving. We would like to engage with the Department on what that basket of figures that goes into the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform report actually is. We are anxious to engage with the Department of Social Protection on that because I think it is more reflective of what is actually happening.

I will move on to some of the statistics in front of us. If we take the overall deprivation index and compare year to year, it is very hard to see a trend, and there can be blips and so forth. If, however, you look at the deprivation index over the last six years, it has gone from 8.4% to 12%. That is a 42% increase over those six years, when a substantial amount of public funding has been put in. As was said, that is not reflective of the massive jump in inflation we have seen over the past 12 to 18 months. I accept that it does not take into account the one-off social welfare payments we had last year either, but it is before the significant jump we have had in the cost of living in this country, yet deprivation for retired people has gone up by 42% over that period. I think it is something we as a committee need to be conscious of. Not all these issues can be solved within the Department of Social Protection.

I want to turn to supplementary welfare allowance on the additional needs payments because I was surprised, Mr. Egan, that you made the point earlier that the number of applications are comparable with 2018-19, considering that the cost of living, including the cost of heating, has gone up significantly and considering that the Department has actively sought applications through making a single phone line available towards advertising these issues and from the evidence we as Members of the Oireachtas are getting in respect of people in financial difficulty. I refer to the evidence the committee is receiving from the likes of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. It concerns me that that is the case. I am not disputing the figures, but it concerns me. That particular benchmark for us as a committee would be more reflective of what is actually happening and its real impact.

If we may turn to one figure in that regard, that is, the percentage of people unable to keep a home adequately warmed, between 2017 and 2022 that has changed.

The number of people who could not keep their home adequately warm increased by 64% between 2017 and 2022, yet we are being told that the numbers of applications in these years were comparable. That is a worry. These figures flag to me that something in the system is failing. The Secretary General addressed the committee on the community welfare officer, CWO, service, which clearly needs to be looked at again. I ask Mr. Egan to comment on those statistics.

My final question is for Mr. Corcoran. This committee also deals with community and rural development and deprivation indexes. We know from the evidence we are receiving that there is a bigger problem in rural areas because fuel costs have a disproportionate impact on people living in these areas. Is it possible to break down some of these statistics based on an urban versus rural categorisation?

Mr. Niall Egan

The Chairman stated the deprivation rate had increased over the past six years. While that is correct with regard to older people, the most recent SILC statistics show that poverty has fallen for the past five years. We know that deprivation is a subset within that but overall, in how it is measured, consistent poverty levels have fallen over the past five years. It is very unfortunate that the most recent figures have shown an increase. The Department is concerned about that, as I said in the opening statement. We have a significant role to play in alleviating that and in targeting measures to support people in future.

On the question about urban and rural categorisation, we can split our payments on a county basis. We have that information and we can provide it to the committee should it so wish. I point to recent findings and research on the minimum essential standard of living, MESL, which is done by the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice and funded by the Department. Historically, that has always found a differential - it costs more to live in rural Ireland than urban Ireland - but the most recent MESL research, largely driven by the cost of gas compared with oil costs, has found that urban costs, for the first time that I can recall, are higher.

There are things happening. This also ties into some of the figures we have seen on keeping homes adequately warm. We are starting to see increases in fuel costs coming through, particularly in 2022, following the Ukrainian war when there was a sudden spike in gas prices, which remain high. This has had a significant impact on households that would not otherwise have had that difficulty.

An Cathaoirleach

These increases would not be reflected in these data and will probably be reflected in next year’s report.

Mr. Niall Egan

They may actually be reflected in these data because of the deprivation points. The deprivation information this report captures is based upon the first half of last year. If, as part of their input into the SILC survey, people are saying they are struggling to adequately heat their home, that could in fact take into account the first six months of last year, and three of those months would be close to the time of the Russian invasion.

An Cathaoirleach

Winter is when we have the real problem with heat.

Mr. Niall Egan

That is a fair point.

An Cathaoirleach

We had a relatively mild spring last year.

Mr. Niall Egan

An increase is therefore likely.

An Cathaoirleach

Mr. Corcoran wanted to make a contribution.

Mr. Dermot Corcoran

One of the issues we have in the statistics unit, in arriving at finer level breakdowns of some of the statistics, is the eircode coverage rate within the Department, which is not particularly high. In and around 60% of addresses have an eircode. That is a determining factor in how we can use the statistics to break them down further than we can currently.

As to what Mr. Egan said with regard to county breakdowns, some counties have a more predominantly urban profile than others. That might give some indication of the urban and rural issue but the one issue we have with regard to arriving at further breakdowns is the lack of eircodes.

An Cathaoirleach

Just to clarify, the Department systems can technically break these down by eircode but the difficulty is that the Department does not have the eircodes of 40% of claimants. The technology can do it but it is just that the data are not available at the moment in the Department.

Mr. Dermot Corcoran

That is correct, yes. One can capture eircodes through MyWelfare.ie and so on.

Senator Paddy Burke

Is the burial grant a stand-alone element in the report or can it be part of other programmes also?

Mr. Niall Egan

It is part of our supplementary welfare allowance supports. That enables us, if someone needs support with funeral costs, to pay a contribution towards such costs.

Senator Paddy Burke

It is not registered on its own.

Mr. Niall Egan

We would-----

Senator Paddy Burke

In other words, we do not know how many people nationally have availed of the burial grant.

Mr. Alan Flynn

As I understand it, colleagues in our operational area for supplementary welfare allowance additional needs can categorise and mark claims by reason. It may be that people need to replace a fridge that has failed or have difficulties with heating bills or funeral expenses. Those statistics are captured where they are marked up on the system. I do not have them in front of me but we can provide them to the Senator.

Senator Paddy Burke

These figures are not broken down individually in order to show how many people availed of the burial grant, the household-----

Mr. Alan Flynn

It is my understanding that we have those statistics. I do not have them in front of me but we can provide them.

Mr. Dermot Corcoran

I will answer that question. In 2022, there was some €6 million in funeral-related expenses under the exceptional and urgent needs payments.

Senator Paddy Burke

The figure was €6 million.

Mr. Dermot Corcoran

It was just under €6 million.

Senator Paddy Burke

How many families or individual funerals does that figure cover? Is there an average or specific amount paid?

Mr. Dermot Corcoran

We have 2,600 recipients of both burial and funeral expenses across the whole year of 2022.

Senator Paddy Burke

Are those individuals?

Mr. Dermot Corcoran

Yes.

An Cathaoirleach

Those are claims.

Mr. Dermot Corcoran

Yes.

Senator Paddy Burke

Is a specific amount paid? Is there a lower or higher amount?

Mr. Niall Egan

It depends on individual circumstances. On average, the payment is roughly €2,600. That figure is off the top of my head.

Senator Paddy Burke

That is the average.

Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív

That payment is strictly means-tested under the supplementary allowance. It is even stricter than the normal means test with regard to a person’s savings and so on. I believe that anything above €5,000 in savings is accounted for with regard to supplementary welfare and so on. It is a very hard grant to get, as per the Department’s figures. I do not know how many people died during the year but I reckon the average is between 45,000 to 50,000, whereas 2,600 people received this grant. It is a rare occurrence.

An Cathaoirleach

Perhaps that issue could be dealt as part of the agenda for later meetings.

I thank Mr. Egan, Mr. Flynn and Mr. Corcoran for their time this morning. It would be useful for the committee to have a further bilateral engagement on the targets. It would be beneficial in benchmarking what is going on.

We might schedule a further meeting in the autumn to do that in advance of the management board considering this. Supplementary welfare allowance as a single line of claims tells us a great deal about what is happening across the social welfare system rather than us being provided with a number of these outputs, some of which are very useful but some of which are of little benefit to us as a committee in measuring what is actually going on and the impact, which is what we are supposed to look at, namely, the impact of the money we are spending on society as a whole. We thank our witnesses for agreeing to that further engagement and we will come back to them in the autumn on that. I also thank them for their time this morning.

I know we receive the book of statistics annually from the Department, but it would probably be useful in the interim if the Department could circulate that again to the members of the committee, just so that we have a scope of the data which have already been collected. We are not talking about reinventing the wheel here, but looking at data which are already available that would be more reflective, from our perspective, of the activity within the Department.

Mr. Niall Egan

We are just putting the finishing touches to our annual statistics report. We will most certainly circulate it to the members of the committee and to the clerk. I also draw attention, and we will send on the link, to our quarterly statistic reports because there is additional information on a more timely basis that I believe answers many of the questions which the committee probably has. We are happy to engage with the committee and are interested in any ideas it may have on the issues it has raised.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank Mr. Egan and I thank our guests for their time this morning. I also thank them for the work and time that is put into this particular report which is, as I say, a very significant one.

As the committee's public business for today is now concluded, I propose that the committee now go into private business to consider other business. Is that agreed? Agreed.

The joint committee went into private session at 11.22 a.m. and adjourned at 12.12 p.m. until 9.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 12 July 2023.