Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 11 Apr 2000

Vol. 517 No. 6

Written Answers. - Social Welfare Benefits.

Ivor Callely

Ceist:

63 Mr. Callely asked the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs further to Parliamentary Question No. 143 of 1 March 2000, the number of supplementary welfare allowance payments in 1999 where a person had no means and was awaiting determination from a Government Department; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10390/00]

Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs (Mr. D. Ahern):

The supplementary welfare allowance (SWA) scheme is administered on my behalf by the health boards. Under the SWA scheme, health boards can provide a basic weekly payment to eligible people who have little or no income. An assessment of a person's means and needs is carried out and where there is a shortfall in a person's income a payment may be made to bring that person's income up to the appropriate supplementary welfare allowance rate.

Payments are made where a person has no means to meet his or her immediate needs pending payment from another source, for example, where he or she are awaiting determination of an application for a social welfare or a health board payment. Some 12,223 people were in receipt of these interim payments on 31 December 1999.

As the Deputy may know, provision has been made in the Social Welfare Act, 2000, to allow my Department to pay SWA in these cases, where it is appropriate to do so. Certain organisational changes will have to be made before these arrangements can be put in place and in the meantime the health boards will continue to make interim payments.

The Deputy may also be interested to know that basic weekly SWA payments are made to asylum seekers who are awaiting determination of their claims to asylum. At present, there are some 7,000 households receiving SWA payments while awaiting a final outcome to their claims for asylum.