Written Answers Nos. 149-166
151. Deputy Jonathan O'Brien asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection the circulars governing the use of investigating social media accounts of persons for social welfare fraud within her Department; and the number of times social media profiles were investigated in the past four years. [36765/14]
View answer152. Deputy Jonathan O'Brien asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection if her staff are allowed set up social media profiles in order to access information when investigating social welfare fraud or if there are specific accounts used for this purpose; and the number of times this has occurred. [36766/14]
View answer153. Deputy Jonathan O'Brien asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection if her Department has purchased services from companies that allow it to view social media profiles of persons or services from app companies that allow it to view the same information; the amount of money spent on these contracts; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36767/14]
View answer154. Deputy Jonathan O'Brien asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection the number of control reviews undertaken last year using social media accounts; the outcome of each review; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36768/14]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 151 to 154, inclusive, together.
The Department’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) facilities (including email and internet) are provided for business purposes. The Department's Acceptable Use Policy is a framework document that sets out the standards for use of the organisation's ICT. The Department’s Email and Internet Policy sets out how staff should use the email and internet facilities. The policy also sets out that staff have a responsibility to observe the rules regarding the Acceptable Use Policy and other relevant policies and guidelines. Email and internet use are considered to be a normal part of DSP's business tools, techniques and processes. Therefore, all of the Department's policies and guidance apply to their use also, whether explicitly stated within the email and internet policy or not.
The Department recognises the popularity and potential value of social media for communicating with customers and acknowledges that these tools can bring benefits. Whilst not a systematic part of the Department's on-going targeted fraud and control activities, the Department’s investigation and control staff will occasionally refer to social media sites as part of their investigations or to follow up on reports from members of the public referring to various sites. Social media is actively used in the context of business and advertising and fraud investigators have used material in the context of investigations related to concurrent working and claiming.
Staff who have access to social media sites for official purposes are vigilant regarding their use of such sites and are responsible for ensuring that at all times their usage is lawful and in keeping with the Department’s policies. The staff using social media sites for control of fraud purposes access information publicly available on those sites. Details obtained from social media - where available - are examined and where relevant may be used as part of an investigation to review a customer’s entitlement. A payment is not suspended or stopped on the basis of a social media site posting. The Department has not purchased services from companies or app companies in order to view social media profiles.
Statistics are not maintained on the number of times social media sites are used as part of control of fraud investigations.
155. Deputy Michael Creed asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection her plans to comply with a Labour Court recommendation on the issue of pension provision for community employment supervisors; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36780/14]
View answer156. Deputy Michael Creed asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection the law in relation to mandatory retirement for community employment supervisors; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36781/14]
View answer168. Deputy Dan Neville asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection the position regarding a matter in relation to community employment supervisors in respect of a person (details supplied) in County Limerick; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36990/14]
View answer169. Deputy Joe Carey asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection if her attention has been drawn to the issue of retiring community employment supervisors; her plans to allow community employment supervisors and assistants to work beyond the age of 66; her plans to introduce a pension for retiring community employment supervisors and assistants; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36995/14]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 155, 156, 168 and 169 together.
With regard to the pension issue, in July 2008, the Labour Court recommended that an agreed pension scheme should be introduced for Community Employment (CE) scheme supervisors and assistant supervisors (LCR19293) and that such a scheme should be adequately funded by FÁS, the agency responsible for CE at that time. The Department of Social Protection is now responsible for CE.
Notwithstanding the position of this Department in rejecting that liability for these costs should be met from public funds, this matter has been the subject of discussions with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the unions representing CE supervisors. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has stated to the unions that companies contracted by the State to provide a service, including in the community sector, will have to manage their expenditure pressures, including labour and pension costs, from within existing funding levels.
Given the level of funding that would be required from this Department, the implementation of the claim is not considered sustainable in light of the current and on-going fiscal environment and the requirement to contain public expenditure. The costs of the introduction of any scheme are likely to be of the order of €3m per annum, with retrospective costs of the order of at least €39m. In this context, it should be noted that the Supervisors and Sponsors have made no contribution towards the cost of the pension arrangements they are currently seeking from the Department.
It should also be noted that this Department is not the employer of CE supervisors and such employees are not public servants but are employees of the sponsoring organisations. The responsibilities of the sponsoring organisations and the individuals concerned must also be recognised when considering pension provision arrangements.
Employers (including CE Sponsoring Organisations) are legally obliged to offer access to at least one Standard Personal Retirement Savings Account (PRSA) under the Pension (Amendment) Act 2002. All CE sponsoring organisations were informed by the Department of their responsibilities under this Act at that time.
CE Supervisors may also qualify for the State Pension at 66 years of age. If they have accrued sufficient PRSI contributions (520 contributions @ full rate, equivalent to 10 years contributions) they will qualify for the State Pension (Contributory), which is not means-tested. In the event that there are insufficient contributions, the person will qualify for the State Pension (Non-Contributory), provided they satisfy the means test.
With regard to the retirement age, the Department does not provide funding for any participant or supervisor who has reached the State Pension age. This has been Government policy since CE commenced in April 1994 as a working-age specific, active labour market intervention. The CE Procedures Manual does not form part of the direct terms and conditions of employment for supervisors or participants, but they do outline the conditions under which the Department will fund the Sponsoring Organisation for the CE positions (under Article 1 of the CE Agreement Contract signed by the Sponsor and the Department). The Department reserves the right to amend the Procedures Manual as and when required, as per Article 1.
The details of the employment contract issued by the Sponsoring Organisation are a matter between the CE Sponsor as the employer and the Supervisor, as the employee. The Department advises the Sponsoring Organisation to include retirement arrangements in any contractual agreements with employees of the scheme, including CE Supervisor, so that all parties are aware of the conditions under which funding is provided. Where a Sponsor has other financial resources and wishes to continue to retain the employment of a Supervisor who has reached State Pension age, the Department has no issue with this arrangement.
Under the Terms of Employment (Information) Act, 1994 and 2001, an employer is legally obliged to provide certain information in written form, including:
- In the case of a temporary contract of employment, the expected duration thereof or, if the contract of employment is for a fixed term, the date on which the contract expires.
All CE Supervisor contracts are of a temporary, fixed-term nature and legally cannot be of indefinite duration, due to the fact that their contracts of employment have been “concluded within the framework of a specific public, or publicly supported training, integration or vocational retraining programme” under Section 2 of the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003.
The cessation of the funding as outlined above has previously been tested under equality legislation and has been found to be compliant and in accordance with the provisions of Section 6 of the Employment Equality Acts, 1998-2004.
157. Deputy Mick Wallace asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection the position in relation to enhanced redundancy payments in respect of a person (details supplied); the reason this payment has not yet been provided; the steps she is taking to expedite this matter; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36875/14]
View answerThe person concerned was employed by Mid-West Cavan Community Employment Scheme as a Community Employment Supervisor between 25th September 1995 and 13th September 2002. I understand that the employment of the person concerned ceased in September 2002 and subsequently in 2003 the employer, Mid-West Cavan Community Employment Scheme, agreed to pay statutory redundancy. The normal employer/employee relationship applies between a Community Employment Supervisor and their employer and as the payment of enhanced redundancy is a matter for the employer, the person concerned should therefore be referred to their former employer, Mid-West Cavan Community Employment Scheme.
158. Deputy Clare Daly asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection further to Parliamentary Question No. 401 of 15 July 2014, the exceptions she was referring to when she stated that any income, with some exceptions, belonging to the person and his or her spouse, partner or cohabitant is assessable as means for disability allowance purposes. [36876/14]
View answerIn general, for disability allowance, means are assessed from all income in cash and non-cash benefits which the claimant or claimant's spouse, partner or civil partner may reasonably expect to receive during the year following the date of their claim. Some types of income are exempt from assessment and these are detailed in Rule 1 (2) in part 2 of Schedule 3 of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005.
159. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection the reason a person (details supplied) in Dublin 22 has had a jobseeker's application suspended; the reason the local office has yet to forward the relevant files to the appeals office despite the appeal having been submitted over two months ago. [36886/14]
View answerAs part of a review of this case, the person concerned was asked to submit certain documentation in support of her jobseekers allowance claim. The requested documentation was not submitted and her claim was suspended on 17 June 2014, and subsequently closed. The option of appeal does not arise in these circumstances. The claim was reopened on 1 September 2014, following contact from the person concerned and she was given additional time to submit the requested documentation. As the requested documentation was still not submitted her claim was disallowed on 26 September 2014. A disallowance letter issued to the person concerned on that date.
160. Deputy Eoghan Murphy asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection the reason for the more than 100% increase in the number of recipients of disability allowance over a ten-year period between 1996 and 2006, from 37,054 recipients to 83,697 recipients, and the subsequent more than 40% increase in recipients over the following eight year period until 2014, with an estimated 108,274 recipients expected to receive the allowance this year; if there is a precedent in other countries for such an increase; and the way in which the figure of 108,274 persons on disability allowance, as a percentage of the overall population, compares to other countries. [36891/14]
View answerA review of the Disability Allowance (DA) scheme, published in 2010, identified a number of factors contributing to an increase in numbers claiming DA since the scheme was introduced in 1996 (when it replaced the Disabled Person’s Maintenance Allowance (DPMA) which had been operated by the Health Boards).
These included:
- demographic factors;
- progressive easing of the means test;
- migration from other Social Welfare schemes (notably in the early years);
- progression from Domiciliary Care Allowance as numbers on that scheme increased;
- extension of DA to people living in institutions and
- improved medical diagnoses etc.
It is also of relevance that DA is a contingency-based, demand-led scheme (unlike DPMA which was budget –driven), so if a person satisfies the statutory qualifying conditions, then DA will be awarded.
In relation to the international context, the OECD have carried out work in this area and published a report in 2010 – “Sickness, Disability and Work: Breaking the Barriers”. This report found that the number of people of working age in Ireland who received disability payments is above the OECD average (in 2008, 6.5% compared to 5.7%) but that spending on sickness and disability made up 10% of Ireland’s public social spending, which is in line with the OECD average.
161. Deputy Eoghan Murphy asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection the reason for the decrease in the number of recipients of illness benefit from a 20-year high of 81,253 people in 2010, to an estimated 58,468 recipients in 2014, a ten year low. [36892/14]
View answerIllness Benefit (IB) is a demand led social insurance-based scheme and the number of recipients is influenced by a range of factors including the number of people in employment, level of health of the working population, people’s social insurance records and scheme conditions.
For example, the reduction in the number of people in employment (down 277,400 from 2008 to 2013) would have had a direct impact on the numbers applying for IB.
In addition a number of policy measures have been introduced in recent years which would have contributed to a reduction in the number of recipients.
In response to the OECD review entitled “Sickness, Disability and Work: Breaking the Barriers” (published in 2008), which identified the structure of the IB scheme as an area of concern (notably the fact that many people were receiving the payment on a long-term basis, increasing the risk that those people will never return to the labour market), the Department introduced a measure in 2009 which capped entitlement to IB at two years.
Also, in Budget 2014 a further measure was introduced which increased the number of “waiting days” before payment is commenced on an IB claim from 3 to 6. This is aimed at incentivising and assisting employers to actively manage short term absences.
162. Deputy Paul J. Connaughton asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection when a decision will be made in relation to an application for domiciliary care allowance in respect of a person (details supplied) in County Galway who applied for the allowance in March; if she is aware that the applicant on supplying requested documents was told that the case was then put to the back of the queue and they could face another wait of up to 12 weeks to have the matter determined; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36910/14]
View answerAn application for domiciliary care allowance (DCA) was received from the person concerned on the 30th April 2014. This application was referred to one of the Department’s Medical Assessors who did not consider that the child met the medical criteria for the allowance. A letter issued on the 29th July 2014 outlining the decision of the deciding officer to refuse the allowance.
A review of this decision was requested on 15th August 2014 and additional information on this child’s condition/care needs has been supplied. The application together with the new information supplied will now be examined by another medical assessor. Once their opinion is received the application will be re-examined by a deciding officer and a revised decision will be made, if warranted. The person concerned will be notified of the outcome of this review as soon as it is completed.
163. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection if she will provide full details and guidelines with regards to the JobBridge and Gateway schemes operated by her Department; the reasons for two different schemes; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36912/14]
View answerJobBridge, the National Internship Scheme provides work experience placements for interns for a 6 or 9 month period. The aim of JobBridge is to assist in breaking the cycle where jobseekers are unable to get a job without experience, either as new entrants to the labour market after education or training or as unemployed people wishing to learn new skills. The initiative gives people a real opportunity to gain valuable experience to bridge the gap between study and the beginning of their working lives.
Interns receive an allowance of €50 per week on top of their existing social welfare entitlement. This is payable for the period of the internship by the Department of Social Protection.
Participation on JobBridge is voluntary for both the Host organization and the Interns. There are a number of conditions that host organisations must satisfy in order to participate on the scheme. These conditions are designed to ensure that interns receive coaching/mentoring during the internship and that the internship does not displace paid employment.
Full details and operational guidelines are available at www.jobbridge.ie.
Gateway was announced in Budget 2013 and is a County and City Council work placement scheme designed to provide short-term working opportunities for unemployed people. The scheme is intended to assist the personal and social development of participants by providing short-term work opportunities with the objective of bridging the gap between unemployment and re-entering the workforce.
The work opportunities are intended to benefit the local area and are identified and provided by Local Authorities in both urban and rural areas. Gateway is managed by Local Authorities.
However, unemployed people who are eligible to participate in the scheme (the main criteria is that candidates must be more than 24 months unemployed) are selected at random and contacted by the Department of Social Protection
To further support the recruitment process, the Department has put arrangements in place for jobseekers meeting the scheme criteria to apply to the Department or councils for participation on Gateway and for Departmental case officers to nominate suitable candidates for recruitment. This accounts for 20% of the available placements and in certain parts of the country there is a strong participant demand to take up places on the scheme.
Full details and operational guidelines can be found at www.welfare.ie.
165. Deputy Joe Carey asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection her plans to revisit the policy decision to reduce the participation limits on the community employment scheme with a view to restoring previous limits in view of the difficulties which community organisations throughout the State are experiencing in keeping schemes in operation due to the problem of securing suitable eligible participants; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36935/14]
View answerThere have been no changes to the cumulative lifetime participation limits on the Community Employment scheme. With effect from 3 April 2000, lifetime participation on Community Employment by an individual will be limited to:
- 3 years (156 weeks) for persons under 55 years of age.
- 6 years (312 weeks) for persons of 55 years of age up to State Pension age.
- Eligible persons in receipt of a qualifying disability-linked social welfare payment will be eligible for one additional year on CE over the standard maximum participation caps, i.e. 4 years maximum time on CE for those under 55 years of age (PTJ Option only), and 7 years maximum time for those between 55 years of age and State Pension age (PTJ Option only).
Participation on CE prior to 3 April 2000 is not counted. Offshore island residents are exempt from this participation cap, subject to the availability of places on island-based CE schemes.
The length of time a person spends on CE in any particular instance depends on their qualifying conditions. Where a person has been in receipt of a CE-qualifying payment for 12 months or more and is 25 years of age or older, they may qualify for 1 year’s participation on CE under the Part-Time Integration (PTI) Option of CE. If a person has been in continuous receipt of a qualifying payment for 3 years or more and is 35 or over, they may qualify under the Part-Time Job (PTJ) Option of CE that allows up to 3 consecutive years participation, subject to annually renewable contracts.
166. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection the outstanding documentation required in respect of an application for rent allowance in the case of a person (details supplied) in County Kildare; if the letter from Private Residential Tenancies Board already provided will suffice as proof of landlord's ownership; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36961/14]
View answerThe client concerned has been requested to provide a housing need assessment, a lease agreement and documentation confirming proof of ownership. The PRTB letter provided does not verify the name of the landlord of the rental property. On receipt of this information the client's entitlement to Rent Supplement can be assessed.
