Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 22 April 2015
40. Deputy Seamus Healy asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection if she will restore the entitlement of working widows and working lone parents who are respectively in receipt of a survivor's pension, the one-parent family payment or illness benefit; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [15855/15]
View answerThe social welfare system is designed to respond to a range of contingencies such as illness, unemployment, old age and widowhood. In Budget 2012 the Government decided, having regard to the fiscal necessity to contain social welfare expenditure and to protect weekly rates of payment, that it was no longer possible to have a social welfare system whereby some people got more than one primary weekly payment.
So, from January 2013, half-rate payments of jobseeker’s benefit, illness benefit and incapacity supplement for those who get widow(er)’s pensions, surviving civil partner’s pensions or one-parent family payment ceased (for new applicants for jobseeker’s benefit, illness benefit and incapacity supplement). Other concurrent payment entitlements, such as new participants on Community Employment schemes, were also ceased as part of the Budget 2012 measures.
Prior to this, there were a limited number of exceptions in the social insurance system to the general principle of “one person, one payment”. These exceptions usually applied in the context of short-term benefits. For instance, recipients of One-Parent Family Payment, Widows and Widowers Pensioners etc. could, until Budget 2012, also receive short-term social insurance benefits, such as Illness Benefit and Jobseeker’s Benefit at half-rate at the same time.
These overlapping payment arrangements were introduced in the early 1950s when the social insurance system was first established - a time when there were only 10 individual social welfare payments – and the social welfare system has been significantly developed since then.
I am satisfied that the general principle of “one person, one payment” serves to maintain the equity of the social welfare system.
