I do not wish to identify particularly the document on which I based most of my remarks on Second Stage and again now but it is a document that was sent to the Minister as well as to me asking fairly specific questions. These questions do not seem to be dealt with. The Minister has dealt with the suggestion that people are not paid the statutory amount. I am glad to hear that this is not so. I found the suggestion very difficult to accept.
However, other questions were raised in that document. For instance, there was the suggestion that non-contributory old age pensioners will be paid so little that they will not be able to maintain themselves properly and consequently should be eligible for payment under the supplementary welfare allowance scheme but that they are not advised of their rights.
I accept entirely that the Minister has circulated details of the scheme to the health centres and that an extensive campaign has been carried out in the Press during the past month with a view to making people aware of the scheme. I trust that to some extent that effort has improved the operation of the Act. But the suggestion is made also that officers at the employment exchanges should be given full briefing as to the details of the scheme and should be requested and encouraged to give information about it to the people with whom they are dealing and that whenever they see an applicant who they think might be entitled to this extra allowance, they should so inform him and help him in his application.
The Minister will have received complaints from other bodies including the largest single trade union in the country, the ITGWU. A statement issued by the union was as follows:
Information at the union's disposal indicates that the community welfare officers are not taking any decisions on applications under the scheme and are instead referring them for approval to superintendents above them. In addition to the fact that no payments may generally be made before a community welfare officer has visited homes of applicants, this means that there is a substantial delay in dealing with their applications.
The statement continued:
Furthermore, it would appear that not all community welfare officers have received guidelines for administering the scheme. Indeed the claim form published by the Department was drawn up without consultation with the Health Boards. As a result the Boards are refusing to handle the forms.
That was some time ago, and I understand there has been some clarification of that. The general complaint is that the scheme has not got off the ground. While it is essentially different from the poor law concept, it is being implemented by the people who previously implemented the old home assistance scheme, and those who were formerly called relieving officers are now being called community welfare officers. These officers have not been sufficiently briefed about the range and scope of the new Act and they approach their new role in society in the manner they traditionally adopted in dealing with home assistance. Consequently many people it was intended would be brought into the supplementary welfare allowance net are not being brought in because the people on the ground do not know that the Oireachtas intended that additional people should be given these benefits as a right and that the old concept of grudging charity should be wiped away. That has not been happening because the same people are being asked to implement a newer and better Act. The Minister should deal with that point.
While the Minister has dealt with the matter of informing the public through the health centres, he has not referred to the dissemination of information through the employment exchanges. He has not dealt with the matter of giving a full briefing to the officers implementing the complete scheme under the Supplementary Welfare Allowance Act, 1975.