Written Answers Nos. 19 - 25
19. Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan asked the Minister for Social Protection if she will allow student travel passes for participants on specific education based community employment schemes; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8917/14]
View answerThe Department of Social Protection does not have any role with regard to eligibility for the Student Travel Card. This is the responsibility of Student Travelcard which comes under the National Transport Authority.
21. Deputy Seán Kyne asked the Minister for Social Protection if she will report on the progress of JobsPlus; the number of businesses that have engaged with the initiative; the number of persons who have availed of employment through the scheme; if she will provide a list of locations, on a county basis, which sets out the regional uptake of the scheme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [10435/14]
View answerJobsPlus is a new employer incentive which encourages and rewards employers who offer employment opportunities to the long-term unemployed. This incentive replaced the employer Job PRSI Exemption Scheme and the Revenue Job Assist from 1st July 2013. Regular cash payments are made to qualifying employers to offset wage costs when they engage jobseekers from the Live Register.
The incentive provides two levels of payment:
- a payment of €7,500 over two years to an employer for persons recruited who have been unemployed for between 12 and 24 months; and
- a payment of €10,000 over two years to an employer who recruits a person who has been two years or more on the Live Register.
As of 21st February 2014, a total of 2,820 employers have registered to check their eligibility. Of these, 2,687 have been approved, while 57 employers have been rejected. The main reason for rejection is that they do not hold a valid tax clearance cert.
Up to the same date, 6,128 jobseekers have applied to check their eligibility. Of these 4,728 are eligible while 1,182 do not satisfy the conditions for the incentive.
Payments for the JobsPlus scheme will issue to 1,231 employers in respect of 1,589 employees on Friday, 28th February 2014. A breakdown of these payments by county is shown in the table below.
TABLE
|
County |
Number of employees for whom payments are being made |
|
Dublin |
451 |
|
Cork |
149 |
|
Waterford |
92 |
|
Kildare |
73 |
|
Galway |
68 |
|
Donegal |
66 |
|
Wicklow |
62 |
|
Tipperary |
60 |
|
Kerry |
52 |
|
Limerick |
52 |
|
Louth |
51 |
|
Wexford |
50 |
|
Meath |
41 |
|
Westmeath |
36 |
|
Mayo |
35 |
|
Kilkenny |
31 |
|
Carlow |
29 |
|
Monaghan |
29 |
|
Laois |
28 |
|
Longford |
28 |
|
Clare |
26 |
|
Cavan |
23 |
|
Sligo |
23 |
|
Offaly |
16 |
|
Roscommon |
11 |
|
Leitrim |
7 |
|
Total |
1,589 |
22. Deputy Denis Naughten asked the Minister for Social Protection her plans to address the persistent control savings associated with child benefit; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [10337/14]
View answerChild benefit is a payment to parents for the support of their children. It is paid to some 607,919 families in respect of 1.16 million children, with an expenditure of approximately €1.9 billion in 2013.
Safeguarding the child benefit budget is a priority and, in this regard the Department has taken a proactive approach to ensuring that it is only paid to eligible families. A policy of issuing continuing eligibility certificates to parents commenced in 2008 and is still in operation. The control policy for the scheme was reviewed in 2010 to ensure that controls in place to prevent fraud and abuse continue to be effective and relevant. As a result of this review, additional enhanced and updated control measures have been devised and implemented.
Control savings are future expenditure that would have been incurred but for this control work. They do not include any cases of departmental or clerical error or any cases where the customer voluntarily told the Department of changes to their means or circumstances, which resulted in a change to their rate of payment.
The total savings from child benefit control activity was €83 million in 2012 and €74 million in 2013. The level of savings achieved is due to the effectiveness of the control programme in ensuring that child benefit is only paid to eligible families.
23. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Social Protection if she will change regulations so that the cost of child care is taken into account when calculating the amount of rent allowance payable to an applicant; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [10472/14]
View answerThere are currently approximately 78,000 rent supplement recipients for which the Government has provided over €344 million for 2014.
Rent supplement is calculated to ensure that the person, after payment of rent, has an income equal to the basic supplementary welfare allowance rate, less a specified weekly minimum contribution which recipients are required to pay from their own resources. The weekly minimum contribution is €30 for a single adult household and €40 for coupled households. Many recipients pay more than this amount because recipients are also required, subject to income disregards, to contribute any additional assessable means that they have over and above the appropriate supplementary welfare allowance (SWA) rate towards their accommodation costs.
Child care costs are not disregarded during the means test in determining rent supplement entitlement. However, the childcare allowance paid to participants of certain training courses is not assessable in respect of the means test for rent supplement. I do not intend to revise the existing criteria for rent supplement at this time.
The after-school childcare scheme (ASCC) was introduced in 2013 for which the Department has provided funding of €14 million for 2014. The scheme provides subsidised after-school childcare for certain customers taking up employment or increasing their days of employment.
