Some 10,000 such grants are payable each year at a cost of £1 million to the social insurance fund. We are increasing this by £10 million to bring it to an annual spend of £11 million in one fell swoop. The maximum grant currently payable is £100 and a reduced grant of £95 is payable where the contribution conditions are partially satisfied. The new section 19 provides for three significant improvements in the scheme. First it provides for a substantial increase from £100 to £500 in the level of the grant. The last such increase was made in April 1982. Members will agree that this represents a really worthwhile contribution towards funeral expenses incurred by families. Under section 4, I am providing that the amount of the funeral grant payable under the occupational injuries scheme will also be increased to £500.
Second, I am extending the scope of the scheme to include other insured persons such as the self-employed and people covered by the modified rate of social insurance, for example – I am happy to say – public servants. At present the scheme is largely confined to employees who pay the full rate of PRSI contribution. It makes no sense that people in such categories as I mentioned earlier cannot qualify for a death grant but may qualify for a widow's or widower's contributory pension.
Third, I am proposing a substantial easement of the contribution conditions so that as many people as possible can qualify under the scheme. The present conditions require the insured person to have a minimum of 26 contributions paid since starting work or since 1 October 1970, and to have either 48 contributions paid or credited in a recent income tax year or an average of 48 contributions per year since October 1970 or since starting work, if later. The grant should be payable to insured people with a minimum level of contributions paid under the social insurance system. In addition, I am proposing that a grant be payable automatically on the death of a person receiving a contributory pension or deserted wife's benefit, his or her spouse or qualified dependants, a person receiving orphan's contributory allowance, or his or her guardian.
I will also introduce an amendment on Committee Stage to provide for even further easement in the contribution conditions for entitlement. These new arrangements will operate from the first week of April and will cost £10 million in a full year. The additional cost is being met fully out of the social insurance fund. In our election manifesto we promised we would do something in the area of bereavement and we proposed certain changes in the social welfare system in this regard. I have gone in a slightly different direction to what we promised in our election manifesto and in the programme for Government. I have done so because it is probably the more acceptable way and will bring money to people at one of the most difficult times of their lives. I commend this change to the House. I thank my Government colleagues for allowing this additional cost of £10 million in a full year to be put into this scheme. It will now be called the bereavement grant instead of the death grant, as it was termed heretofore.
Section 21 provides for the payment of a special rate of old age contributory pension to certain self-employed persons who were aged 56 years or over on 6 April 1988 when social insurance was extended to this group. The Government is delivering on the commitment made to this group in our election manifesto by introducing a special rate of contributory pension for those with at least five years' paid contributions since that date. This is delivering on something we promised when we were in Opposition. Other parties in the House spoke about this when in Opposition but did nothing about it when they were in Government. We are doing what we can in this regard.
Entitlement to the new pension will begin from the first week in April but payments will not be made until October. This allows my Department to examine all the relevant claims and to ensure that refunds of contributions made to more than 3,000 contributors in this group are recouped. Any arrears of payment due will be issued in October. The new pension will be payable at 50 per cent of the maximum personal rate, plus 50 per cent of appropriate increases for qualified adults and child dependants, where applicable. We estimate that up to 10,000 people – 8,000 pensioners and 2,000 qualified adults – will benefit from this measure at an estimated additional cost of over £18 million.
A comprehensive review of the qualifying conditions for entitlement to old age and retirement pensions will be undertaken by my Department this year. I am doing this in response to representations from all sides of the House, including my own parliamentary party's sub-committee which deals with social welfare areas.
Particular attention will be given to the yearly average test. It will also deal with the treatment of pre-1953 contributions and the commitment given in the programme for Government to allow women who take time out for family reasons, to continue contributions for pensions purposes. I will report back to the House when the review is completed.
Section 22 provides for new arrangements under the unemployment assistance scheme aimed at benefiting low income fishermen. The new arrangements, which will be known as fishing assist, represent a substantial response from the Government to the difficulties experienced, during periods of prolonged bad weather, by fishermen who operate out of small boats right around our coastal communities. The new provisions involve changes to the means test for unemployment assistance including 80 per cent of all income from self-employment being assessed instead of 100 per cent as at present, child related disregards of £100 per annum for each of the first two qualified children and £200 per annum for each subsequent child and a relaxation of the signing on arrangements. An additional £1 million is being made available on a full year basis for these new arrangements which will take effect from the first week of April.
Section 23 provides that lone parents who are temporarily absent from the State for less than 12 months will continue to retain their entitlement to social assistance under the former schemes of deserted wife's benefit and allowance and prisoner's wife's allowance. I will introduce a further provision on Committee Stage dealing with the continued entitlement of certain people to deserted wife's benefit. On a sad note, I should mention that I brought forward this amendment, having been prompted by a parliamentary question tabled by the late Deputy Upton a few weeks ago. I take this opportunity to extend my condolence to his wife and family.
Section 26 strengthens the powers of social welfare inspectors to allow them to remove or secure for later inspection documents or records from employers' premises and to require employers to provide reasonable explanations of their contents. These additional powers will facilitate inspectors in making sure employers are meeting their PRSI obligations and that their employees are not concurrently working and claiming social welfare benefits.
Section 26 also makes specific provision for an inspector exercising his or her statutory powers, accompanied by a Garda in uniform, to stop any vehicle he or she reasonably suspects is being used for the purpose of employment or self-employment and to make inquiries of any persons in such a vehicle or require them to produce any record in their possession in connection with their employment or business.
Over the past year, at the invitation of the Garda, my Department and the Departments of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and Environment and Local Government and the Revenue Commissioners participated at checkpoints in Counties Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow, Monaghan, Cavan, Louth and Meath. Some people said they had not heard about these checkpoints, but they were widely publicised in the media during the past year. These checkpoints have largely focused on commercial vehicles or those used in the course of employment or self-employment. From my Department's perspective, it is primarily aimed at people who may be concurrently working and claiming social welfare payments.
As a result of follow up by social welfare officers in respect of these multi-agency checkpoints, to date a total of 118 social welfare claims were disallowed giving savings of £350,000. In addition, the Garda and Customs detected a number of road traffic, road transport and customs offences. This approach has been very effective in detecting serious levels of fraud and abuse. For example, one checkpoint in February last year detected no less than 10 per cent of fraud cases in 100 vehicles checked. A number of cases involving people from Northern Ireland are being followed up through the normal liaison arrangements with the social security agency there.
To date social welfare inspectors operated under general powers contained in existing legislation, namely, section 212(3)(d). I have been advised that it would be more appropriate to replace these existing general powers with more specific provisions. Concern was expressed by some Members about the exercise of such powers, but I assure the House these powers will continue to be used responsibly.
This programme is not aimed at ordinary citizens going about their business. Some Members pontificate as if they are the only people who represent the ordinary people. Ordinary citizens are being ripped off by defrauders, including social welfare defrauders. It is those in most need, old age pensioners, carers, widows, lone parents and the unemployed, who lose out by this. I make no apology for doing all I can to stamp out fraud in the social welfare system. Every £1 taken in fraud means there is £1 less for the needy in our society.
Surely those who find fault with the multi-agency effort to detect fraud are not asking us to turn a blind eye to what we all know is going on. If so, they are being hypocritical in the extreme. Fraud is fraud. Those most vocal on this cannot have it both ways. These powers will only work if they are used in a sensible and responsible manner. I can assure the House that is the way they will be operated under my stewardship and that is how they were operated in the past.
At the request of the Department of Health and Children, section 27 extends the scope of the legislative provisions I introduced last year for an integrated social services system to include the General Medical Services Payments Board and the voluntary hospitals operating in the health services area. Deputies will recall that the provisions introduced last year provided for the standardisation of the RSI number as a unique public service identifier, the introduction of a public service card and a payment card and the sharing and transfer of personal information between specified public bodies for the purposes of determining entitlement to certain social services and for the control of such services, of which six were specified.
The General Medical Services Payments Board and 28 voluntary hospitals are now being added to the existing list of specified bodies. That list includes Government Departments, local authorities, health boards, the Revenue Commissioners, FÁS, An Post, the GRO and the Legal Aid Board.
My Department consulted a wide range of specified bodies on how the new system will work. Plans are well advanced to launch a combined PPSN and public service card initiative across the public service in 1999 to heighten public awareness of the potential it offers for improved service delivery. This initiative will include the development of a common means database accessible to agencies delivering means tested public service schemes. It will also explore ways the public service card could help achieve greater integration of public services, better access for individuals and for its adoption as a payment card.
The Departments of Education and Science, Agriculture and Food and local authorities expressed a keen interest in implementing it in the near future. The Department of Health and Children has plans for the voluntary hospitals to use the number for patient records and screening programmes. The GMS Board will use it for the creation of a national patient index in the consolidated drug subsidisation scheme. All data-sharing will obviously be governed by the existing legislative provisions.
Sections 28 and 29 include two important provisions dealing with the handling of social welfare claims by the CAB. Officers of the Minister currently working in the bureau have the power to investigate and determine entitlement to social welfare payment in claims made by people involved in criminal activity. The identity of these officers is protected under the relevant legislation. Under existing legislation, civil proceedings can only be brought at the suit of the Minister or initiated by an authorised officer of the Minister. The identity of such officers is not protected under the Criminal Assets Bureau Act. Section 28 is designed to provide that civil proceedings in such cases can be taken by the bureau.
Section 29 provides that an appeal to the Circuit Court in social welfare cases dealt with by the bureau must be submitted within 21 days from the date of notification of the chief appeals officer's direction in this matter. A similar time limit currently applies to appeals to the independent social welfare appeals office.
I intend to introduce a further provision on Committee Stage to provide the bureau officers with the powers to investigate and determine entitlements to supplementary welfare allowance payments in cases made by people involved in criminal activity. At present such claims are processed only by the health boards and the provision will address concerns about the present levels of protection of their staff in those circumstances.
Section 32 provides for an increase in the health contribution from 1.25 per cent to 2 per cent and for an increase in the weekly exemption threshold from £207 to £217 from 6 April next. Section 33 repeals the relevant provisions underpinning the 1 per cent employment and training levy which, as announced in the budget, is being abolished from 6 April next. The net effect of this will be an overall reduction of 0.25 per cent in the levies.
I have been concerned for some time about the issue of integration, the process whereby occupational pensions effectively top up the social welfare pension to provide a total pension specified in the rules of the occupational pension scheme, and I referred to this issue on a number of occasions, most recently in my budget speech last December.