The fuel allowance scheme, the household benefits scheme and the free travel scheme are non-statutory schemes which are operated by my Department. The schemes were introduced and extended by Ministerial Announcement.
Decisions in relation to applications for non-statutory schemes are made by Officers of my Department based on published guidelines setting out the conditions of entitlement in detail.
There are currently no plans to place the non-statutory schemes on a statutory basis. The major advantage of schemes being on a non-statutory basis is that they can be modified without needing a legislative change in response to customer needs, subject to the availability of resources. A recent example of this was the double week payment of fuel allowance during the cold weather event at the start of March.
I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.