As part of Budget 2012, the Government has decided that income from employment as a home help funded by the Health Service Executive (HSE) is to be assessed in means tests for social assistance schemes, in the same way as income from any other type of employment income. Up to the end of 2011 a home help employed by the HSE could earn up to approximately €29,000 per annum and still qualify for a full social welfare payment as none of this income was taken into account when calculating their means. This exemption had initially been introduced to encourage people to take up employment as a home help at a time when such employment was very low paid. This is no longer the case as the status and salary levels have been formalised since 2000. As the salary scale is now well ahead of the national minimum wage, there is no longer a basis for this special exemption.
I recognise that income from home help hours can be insecure and sporadic in many cases. People working as home helps will, of course, benefit from the standard earnings disregards in line with all other employees and if their home help income is low, the measure announced in the Budget has little or no impact on them:
One-Parent Family Payment: first €130 disregarded in full, amounts between €130 and €425 assessed at 50%
Jobseeker's Allowance: up to €60 per week disregarded in full and just 60% of the balance is assessed.
Similarly, a person on Jobseeker's Allowance whose partner is working as a home help, or a person working part-time as a home help and claiming Jobseeker's Allowance in respect of part of the week, will benefit from the standard Jobseeker's Allowance income disregards. In these cases, up to €60 per week is disregarded and just 60% of the balance is assessed.
Up to now, no account was taken of home help income when assessing means for certain social welfare payments. This measure will reduce the payments of approximately 2,000 recipients whose means assessments had previously excluded all of their earned income from home help. It advances the objective of treating all income in the same way for means testing purposes with no special arrangements depending on the type of employment. Given that background, I do not propose to withdraw the measure.