The back to school clothing and footwear allowance scheme provides a once-off payment to eligible families to assist with the costs of clothing and footwear when children start or return to school each autumn. The allowance is payable for eligible children between the ages of 4 and 17 in respect of whom a qualified child increase is being paid. It is also payable to those between the ages of 18 and 22 who are in full-time second level education and in respect of whom a qualified child allowance is being paid.
The allowance paid for each eligible child aged from 4 to 11 years on or before 30 September 2020 is €150 while an allowance of €275 is paid for each eligible child aged over 12 on or before 30 September 2020. The scheme operates from June to September each year.
This year, the eligibility criteria for back to school clothing and footwear allowance has been extended to include the Covid-19 pandemic unemployment payment as a qualifying payment for the allowance. Recipients of this payment will also need to satisfy all the other qualifying conditions in order to qualify.
Similar to previous years, the majority of customers are awarded back to school clothing and footwear allowance automatically and notification of the awards issued to these customers in late June. This year 115,000 families have been automatically approved for the back to school clothing and footwear allowance in respect of 211,000 qualified children. Payments amounting to €43m were made to these families in the week commencing 13 July 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic unemployment payment was not amongst the schemes used for automatic selection, so it therefore did not have an effect on numbers awarded the allowance automatically.
The back to school clothing and footwear allowance opened to new applications on 6 July 2020. To date, 43,000 applications have been received. Payments amounting to €7.4m have been made to 18,500 families in respect of 36,500 qualified children from the applications received to date.
A total of 579 applications have been reviewed following the reduction in the Covid-19 pandemic unemployment rates of payment. 266 (46%) of these cases were awarded back to school clothing and footwear allowance following this review and payments have issued from the week beginning 28 September 2020.
