Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 11 June 2013
465. Deputy Brendan Griffin asked the Minister for Social Protection if she will review the terms of the farm assist and rural social schemes in order to facilitate more low-income farmers; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [27913/13]
View answerThe farm assist scheme is based on jobseeker’s allowance. It was introduced in 1999 to replace ‘Smallholders Unemployment Assistance’ for low income farmers, without the requirement to be available for and genuinely seeking work. Farm assist recipients retain all the advantages of the jobseeker’s allowance scheme such as retention of secondary benefits and access to activation programmes.
In Budget 2013 two measures were announced, which were implemented in April 2013, which bring the farm assist scheme into closer alignment with the jobseeker’s allowance scheme’s treatment of self-employed persons by:
a. Increasing the amount of means from self-employment, which is assessed against the claimant from 85% to 100%; and
b. Discontinuing the means testing disregards for child dependents of claimants.
Farm assist is a flexible payment and any farmer experiencing lower levels of income or cash-flow issues, due for example to bad weather, can ask his/her local social welfare / Intreo office to review the level of means applying to his/her claim.
The rural social scheme provides income support for farmers and those engaged in fishing who have an entitlement to specified social welfare payments. Participants are engaged for 19½ hours per week to provide certain services of benefit to rural communities. The scheme currently provides work opportunities for around 2,600 participants and 130 supervisory staff.
The Department of Social Protection has recently published a review of employment support schemes which, together with the outcome of the focused policy assessment of the rural social scheme which the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has indicated it intends to conduct this year, will inform future policy developments of the scheme.
Any changes to these schemes would be a matter for Government to consider in a budgetary context.
