Vol. 541 No. 2
816 Mr. Haughey asked the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs if he will allow health boards pay supplementary welfare rent allowances by cash instead of by cheque; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21970/01]
The supplementary welfare allowance or SWA scheme allows for payment of a weekly or monthly supplement to be made in respect of rent or mortgage interest to any person in the State whose means are insufficient to meet their needs. The SWA scheme is administered on behalf of my Department by the health boards and neither I nor my Department have any function in deciding entitlement in individual cases. My Department eliminated cash payments from its local offices during the 1990s and customers were transferred to alternative methods of payment. The non-cash payment methods currently in use include cheques, personalised payable orders – PPOs, postdrafts, which are similar to cheques, electronic funds transfer or EFT to accounts at banks, post offices and certain other financial institutions, and electronic information transfer or EIT – the transfer of payment information by computer tape to An Post which then processes the payments at post offices.
The SWA scheme is administered by the health boards through the community welfare officers at the local health centres around the country. As is the case with my Department, cash payments have been removed from these offices for some time and payment is made by way of one of the payment methods set out above.
The removal of cash from these front line offices has provided a two fold benefit. First, it reduces the requirement for people to attend the relevant office each week/month in order to collect their money. Second, the removal of cash from the offices has reduced the number of "cash outlets" serving social welfare customers thus lowering security requirements in relation to cash-in-transit and cash holding arrangements etc. This strategy has had a beneficial impact on the operations of the offices concerned. There have been improvements in the quality and delivery of service to customers.
I accept that the demand for rented accommodation in many areas is such that prospective tenants sometimes find it difficult to secure accommodation. I am aware that some landlords state that they are unwilling to accept rent supplement cheques but I understand that the issue is not the payment instrument itself but rather a reluctance to rent their properties to people who qualify for SWA rent supplement, regardless of how that is paid.
In the circumstances, re-introducing cash payments would not contribute to dealing with those difficulties. In any event, I feel it would be a backward step to re-introduce cash payments.
Apart from the security issues involved with handling cash, the quality and delivery of services would suffer. For these reasons I have no plans to restore cash to the list of methods of payment currently in use.
