Deputies Niamh Smyth and Bríd Smith have sent apologies in respect of Questions Nos. 41 and 42, respectively.
Other Questions
Questions Nos. 41 and 42 replied to with Written Answers.
Jobseeker's Payments
John Brady
Question:43. Deputy John Brady asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the status of the report into the impact of the reduced jobseeker's payment rates for jobseekers aged 18 to 25 years, further to the commitment in the Pathways to Work 2016-2020 strategy; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8344/18]
I want to ask about the status of a report the Government committed to on the cuts to jobseeker's payments for young unemployed people. That report was committed to under the Pathways to Work 2016-2020 strategy. We have yet to see the report. Will the Minister give us an update on it?
The main social welfare schemes for people who are unemployed are jobseeker's allowance and benefit schemes which provide income support for people who have lost work and are unable to find alternative employment for a short time. The 2018 Estimates for the Department provide for expenditure this year on these jobseeker's schemes of €2.17 billion.
Lower weekly rates for younger jobseeker's allowance recipients were introduced to protect young people from welfare dependency by providing them with a very strong financial incentive to engage in education or training or to take up employment if they were lucky enough to be able to get a job. Where young jobseekers participate on an education or training programme, they receive the higher weekly payment of €193, which is the maximum personal rate for jobseeker's allowance. This will increase to €198 from 26 March 2018, having fully given the €5 increase to young people under 25.
The CSO's January 2018 monthly unemployment report shows that the seasonally adjusted youth unemployment rate, that is, the unemployment rate for people aged between 15 and 24 years, was 13.7%. This represents a significant decrease of four and half percentage points from the rate of over 18% we recorded in January last year, so we definitely are going in the right direction.
The National University of Ireland, Maynooth is examining the effectiveness of the reduced rates in encouraging young jobseekers to avail of education, training, employment programmes or opportunities or both. While my Department did not commission this research, we have given the university access to the data from the jobseeker's longitudinal database. Under Pathways to Work 2016-2020, my Department committed to review and report on the impact of the reduced payment rates for jobseekers aged between 18 and 25. This review will be finalised shortly but we will take into account the recent results of the research from Maynooth.
I am keen to ensure the Department identifies effective measures to encourage and support young people in finding and securing sustainable jobs. The best way to do this is through engagement processes and by incentivising young people to avail of education and training, thereby enhancing their employment prospects.
As the Minister is aware, the cuts to jobseeker's payments for young unemployed people were started in 2009 by the then Government comprising Fianna Fáil and the Green Party. It was eagerly pursued by the Minister's party, Fine Gael, and has continued until now. It is a discriminatory cut, and this has been echoed by many organisations, including the National Youth Council of Ireland, which has stated quite clearly it is discriminatory. Our young people aged between 18 and 24 are on what will be €107.70 on 26 March and our 25 year olds have to live on €152.80. This is not only discriminatory but completely unfair. It does not take into account the realities. It puts every young person in the same category, assuming everyone is living at home and relying on family support. The Minister's predecessor said quite clearly that he could not understand how our young people cannot find jobs when people can get off planes and find a job immediately. The reality is no young person wants to be unemployed. These cuts are discriminatory. We have been promised this report for a considerable time. Will the Minister give us a definitive timeframe as to when we will finally see it?
The only category we put all young people in is the fact they are all aged between 18 and 25. There is no basis for thinking they all live at home, that they all have green hair or that they all have four ears. The only category they are in is they are aged between 18 and 25. The targeted measure, aimed at protecting young people from welfare dependency, is to incentivise them to avail of the education and training opportunities that are there in order that they can improve their chances of getting a full-time and sustainable job. I do not see what is wrong with this. I cannot really understand why the Deputy thinks asking young people to train and re-skill themselves is a problem. To show the Deputy it is not prescriptive and that we genuinely do not think they are all the same, there are rates of payment that can be achieved and a full rate of payment for people aged under 26, such as anybody who has a qualified child or is transferring from jobseeker's allowance immediately after exhausting their benefits. There are a number of categories in which people between the ages of 18 and 25 can avail of a full payment, but the absolute easiest way for anybody in that category who is not lucky enough to have a job, that is, the 13% of our young people who are still looking for work, to avail of the €198 per week from 26 March is to go on a training course, go back to education or engage with the Intreo services so we can help them to find a full-time and sustainable job.
The reality, and many organisations have said it, is the discriminatory cuts over which the Minister is presiding are having an impact on young people. Many homeless organisations state they are especially concerned about the effect the cuts may be having on young people. They state it is exacerbating the homeless situation for young people. It is having many negative consequences across the board. Once the report is finally published - the Minister still has not answered the question on when this long-anticipated report will finally be published - we will see the impact it is having on our young people. We know how the discriminatory cuts impact on young people. No young person wants to be sitting at home unemployed. They want to be out there and upskilling. The reality is many young people have the skills, knowledge and enthusiasm to get back into the workforce but they are being precluded from doing so. When will the report to be published and when will the Minister bring an end to the discriminatory cuts facing our young unemployed people?
Instead of looking at the glass half empty, as the Deputy seems to be able to do very well, why does he not look at the reality that this time last year, 18% of our young people were unemployed while today, only 13% are unemployed? This means 5% of the people who have engaged over the past year with JobPath, community employment, jobs clubs, local employment services and Tús have managed to get full-time work. We now have 26,000 people under the age of 26 on jobseeker's allowance and we will not stop until we have none.
We will do that by interacting with them to make sure that they receive training, so that their skills will match the jobs that are there. We all know that there are jobs there. We all know that we are coming very close to full employment. The doors of the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation are being beaten down at present with requests to get people in from foreign countries to come in and take up the jobs that are here. As such, I am not going to stop. We are not going to increase dependency on welfare for anybody under the age of 26. We are far more ambitious for young people in this country than Deputy Brady seems to be.
Social Welfare Benefits Data
Peter Fitzpatrick
Question:44. Deputy Peter Fitzpatrick asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the uptake to date of treatment benefits which were recently extended to the self-employed; her plans to extend additional benefits to the self-employed; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8402/18]
I am delighted to get an opportunity to ask a question of the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty. Can she give me an update on the treatment benefits, which she recently extended to the self-employed? Can she indicate what additional benefits she plans to extend to the self-employed? As a former self-employed person, I believe the self-employed were neglected in recent years and am delighted to see a Minister who will do something at long last.
I thank the Deputy for his question. The treatment benefit scheme was made available to self-employed contributors for the first time from 27 March 2017. The benefits available at that time, which were free dental and optical exams and a contribution towards hearing aids, were extended to self-employed people. Between self-employed contributors and their dependent spouses, those changes have added 450,000 customers to the scheme, which I think is absolutely deadly.
The additional optical and dental treatments were introduced at the end of October 2017. We have seen a surge in uptake from the customers, with the new dental cleaning and supply or repair of glasses being particularly popular. Consequently, more than 330,000 claims have been processed and paid in the three months from November 2017 to January 2018. This represents a fourfold increase on the same period a year ago.
It is not possible to identify treatment benefit claims from the self-employed without significant analysis and development work, as the Department does not record this information under separate pay-related social insurance, PRSI, classes. We do not ask when a service use appears whether he or she is employed or self-employed. However, the increase in claim numbers around the period of extending these benefits is a good indicator of the interest in them from the self-employed community and their spouses.
Entitlement to invalidity pension was also extended to the self-employed from December 2017.
The actuarial review of the Social Insurance Fund, which I published in October 2017, will play an important role in informing the overall debate on policy developments on the Social Insurance Fund, including its financial sustainability and the consideration of extending benefits for workers generally, including to the self-employed. The actuarial review concluded that self-employed PRSI contributors already get excellent value for money and provided costings for the extension of additional benefits to self-employed people.
I thank the Minister for her reply. I must agree with her that it is very important that these treatments are given to the self-employed, especially the optical and dental services. I also believe they have been extended to their spouses and partners. It is great that approximately 450,000 self-employed people will benefit from this. As has been said, this country was on its hands and knees from 2007 and onwards. The self-employed, owners of small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, and entrepreneurs are the people who gave a big hand in getting the country back on its feet.
The self-employed should be entitled to similar, if not the same, benefits as full-time employees working to pay their PRSI. To me, it is a brave person who gets up in the morning, goes to the bank, gets a loan and starts his or her own business. These people must be looked after.
I agree with the Deputy. A working group was set up in my Department to examine and develop a benefits scheme for the self-employed who become unemployed. The group has now finished its work. I am specifically referring to jobseeker's allowance and jobseeker's benefit, which are probably the schemes that self-employed people tell us most often that they would love to access, from a security perspective. As the Deputy notes, they go to work every day, and they have had the gumption and initiative to set themselves up in work and to provide employment for other people. The least the State can do is provide them with the security blanket of knowing that if they are sick they have a minimum basic income for that period.
The group that we established has now finished its work. We are currently completing a report, which I hope will be available shortly, and then I will examine and consider the report's context. Again however, it must be in line with the growing economy. It depends on how much funding is available and on the review of the Social Insurance Fund. Ultimately the aim of this partnership Government is to make sure that we extend all of the employment benefits that are available to employees to self-employed people. We will not stop continuing to extend them.
I thank the Minister very much. As a self-employed person myself, I started my own business in 1994. I remember sitting down with my wife at night-time and the decision to go into the bank to hand over the deeds of my house as a guarantee that, whatever money it gave me, at least it would be repaid. It is very important that we give the self-employed jobseeker's allowances and benefits. I refer again to the self-employed, SMEs and entrepreneurs. I know a lot of people who are afraid to give a commitment to start their own business. I remember going to night classes years ago, spending a lot of money to learn what it would take to set up my own business. Can the Minister give us any indication of when she thinks that the self-employed might get their jobseeker's allowances and jobseeker's benefits? A lot of people who would like to take a chance but if one is a family man, it is not only oneself one has to think about, it is also one's family.
This is a twofold system. All of the supports, encouragement and financial assistance to help people to establish their own businesses are available form the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation. They are growing, and given that more people have started to establish their own businesses, we can see that confidence is returning. However, Deputy Fitzpatrick is right. In our Department, which is concerned with income support, we want to fill the gap so that a self-employed person who is ill can avail of the security blanket of the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. I am not in a position to tell the Deputy when this gap will be closed. If I won the lotto tomorrow, we might do it much sooner than we will be able to. It is very much dependent on the growth in the economy. The economy is in a good place at the moment and if those trajectories keep going in the right direction, I anticipate that we will be able to do it within the lifetime of this Government, assuming that we have a full term. However, we are not going to stop until we extend to the self-employed community the full spectrum of supports that are available from my Department, whether they are treatment benefits or any of the schemes that are available to employees.
We have received an apology from Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett.
Question No. 45 replied to with Written Answers.
Departmental Priorities
Willie Penrose
Question:46. Deputy Willie Penrose asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the policy changes she plans to pursue in 2018; her priorities in view of the publication of the social impact assessment of budget 2018; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8346/18]
My question refers to a study which came out earlier in the month. It is similar to the equality budgeting strategy. I note that the social impact assessment of the welfare and tax measures in the 2018 budget was published utilising the simulating welfare and income tax changes, SWITCH, model developed by the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, which I recall being introduced some weeks ago. The results indicate and encompass the impact of the budget changes. I would be grateful if the Minister could outline whether areas were identified in that study that would incline the Government to take alternative pathways in preparation for the 2019 budget or to use the study as a kind of floor to allow the incorporation of alternative views in the next budget.
Since my appointment as Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection in June, I have been clear in outlining that my priorities include children living in consistent poverty, working families including lone parents and people on fixed incomes. I am very pleased about the positive policy developments impacting on all of these areas that are coming into effect this year, as outlined in this year's budget. From the end of March, the maximum weekly rates of social welfare payments for all social welfare recipients will increase by €5 per week, with proportionate increases for those on reduced rates and for qualified adults. This delivers on the programme for Government's commitment to increase the weekly rates of payment for pensioners, people with disabilities and our much-valued carers.
There are also specific measures benefitting low-income families with children. The qualified child increase will increase by €2 per week, which is the first increase in this payment since 2010. This targeted increase will assist families with the most financial need. In addition the income thresholds of the working family payment will increase by €10 per week for families with up to three children, benefitting low-income working families. The income disregard for the one-parent family and jobseeker’s transitional payments will increase to €130 per week. This means that lone parents can keep more of their own earnings from employment without it impacting their income support from the State. These and the other budget measures and policy improvements work to ensure that everyone in Irish society can feel the benefits of our growing and recovering economy.
The social impact assessment carried out by my Department, using the ESRI’s tax and benefits microsimulation model, SWITCH, confirms that budget 2018 succeeds in its goal for everyone to benefit from the recovery. The assessment confirms the importance of social welfare measures in ensuring that budget packages are progressive and benefit those who need the most support.
Indeed, the assessment supports the implementation of the national social target for poverty reduction and reducing consistent poverty from 4% to 2% or thereabouts in 2020. It will take significant funding to achieve that and to improve living standards. Social transfers and taxes have a significant role in that, which we support. I also support the Minister's priorities regarding lone parents and jobseeker’s transitional payments, and I subscribe to the restoration of the income disregard for one-parent families, which facilitates a return to employment or the continuation of employment and opportunities in that regard.
I have always raised the issue of carers. I wrote a report on this issue, of which I am proud. The Minister has continued what various Ministers have done over the years. Carers are just about recognised, but they are poorly treated. I filled in forms for the son of an 89 year old blind woman the other day. He does a little farming. I would win the lottery or get a camel through the eye of a needle quicker. He is allowed to farm for 15 hours as a carer. The Department will come back with a multiplicity of questions about this and I will get angry. The man looks after his mother day and night and he does an hour or two a day with the cattle, giving them fodder and so on. Sometimes the questions the Minister's officials come back with regarding applications would stretch incredulity. I have a lot of knowledge about agriculture but some of them do not know much.
Given that our Department is involved in income support, all the measures and the means test criteria that we go through from one scheme to the next have to be adhered to, but I totally recognise and agree with what the Deputy said. If we were starting with a blank page again, we would value and recognise from a monetary perspective the care that is being given by all our carers who are probably, and not to be trite about it, unsung heroes. I am half apologising but carer's allowance is treated as an income support by our Department and it has to be adjudicated on in the same way as any other payment that is given to support somebody's income. I wish that was not the way but I genuinely acknowledge that the country probably could not afford to pay for the care that is being given. We, therefore, need to find other ways to recognise the huge contribution that is made by our carers. Fully restoring the respite care grant was a start and I hope that will be increased and extended. The introduction of the 20-year credit towards a pension for those caring for a child or an adult with intellectual or physical disabilities might go some way to recognising the valuable contribution they make. We cannot ever fully repay the carers of our society for what they do.
I acknowledge the improvements that have been made and those to which the Minister is committed. I have always acknowledged her efforts in that regard. I look forward to being pleasantly surprised if this application goes straight through the system. I know there has to be an assessment and an adjudication but if this 89 year old woman was in a nursing home, it would cost €950 a week. The few peanuts her son will get will amount to €220 a week. If that is divided by the number of hours he does, he will earn €2.20 an hour. He has to work hard and, for example, he reads the newspaper to his mother every night. I get animated about this issue. The Minister is correct that carers are unsung heroes. There are hundreds of thousands throughout the country and they are worth €6 billion to the economy. If we did not have them, how many hospital and nursing home places would we have to find? Without the people of Ireland, we would be on our face. The Minister recognises that; I know her family background and I know she is committed to this issue. She should try to find a few shillings. That is why the Labour Party is going after rogue self-employment. If we get that €60 million and give it straight to carers, the Minister will have done a great job.
I cannot follow that. I agree with everything the Deputy said.
Public Services Card Authentication
John Curran
Question:47. Deputy John Curran asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the number of persons who have been refused access to social protection payments for not having a public services card, PSC; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8407/18]
Last Thursday week, the Joint Committee on Employment Affairs and Social Protection began to examine issues relating to the public services card, PSC. During the meeting, we were told about a specific case of a lady whose pension had been refused for non-production of a card. How common is that practice? How many people have been refused access to social protection entitlements for not producing this card and how were those issues resolved?
Nobody has been refused a payment for failure to produce a PSC. There is no legal basis for the card. People are asked to come in to identify themselves under the SAFE 2 authentication process to a standard that is acceptable to the Minister under the law. In the case to which the Deputy referred, the client had not gone through the SAFE process; it had nothing do with the PSC.
The Deputy will appreciate that my Department needs to verify the identity of our customers to a substantial level of assurance to ensure that they are who they claim to be, that they are not being impersonated, that they are not claiming services or payment in another identity, to minimise the need for them to prove their identity over and over again, and to provide them with access to an increasing range of online public services, thus making interaction with the State easier. The SAFE 2 identity verification standard agreed by the then Government in 2005 provides that substantial level of assurance and the requirement for it is provided for under section 247C of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005, as amended, in respect of customers of my Department. Once customers complete a SAFE 2 identity verification process successfully, they may be issued with a PSC as a physical token of having gone through that process. Nobody will make them take the card. If they do not want it, they do not have to take it. The Department does not collect data on the number of individuals who currently, or who, at any point in time, have had a payment stopped by reason of failing to complete the SAFE 2 registration process because the data is fluid in nature.
For example, a considerable number of customers who have a payment or entitlement suspended or stopped subsequently decide to complete the SAFE 2 process and have their payment or entitlement reinstated. The decision to stop a payment is never made lightly or quickly. However, where a customer does not "satisfy the Minister in relation to identity" as per the legal requirement, a payment can be disqualified. In advance of any such disqualification, the Department makes every effort to engage with the customer to explain the legal basis for the SAFE 2 identity verification process and the consequences of potential disqualification. Where a payment has been disqualified and customers subsequently successfully completes the SAFE 2 registration process, their payment will be reinstated by the Department, assuming they meet all the relevant qualifying criteria for that payment. I hope that clarifies the matter for the Deputy.
It clarifies the Department's point of view but it does not provide clarity from our point of view because of the number of people who have the card. The pensioner to whom I referred was not refused. She had her payments withdrawn. While the Minister rightly said this was done to satisfy SAFE 2 rather than a requirement to produce the card, there is not much difference because the information provided under SAFE 2 leads to the creation of the card. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties said that there were a number of cases of people who had been refused payment. Subsequently, they may have come back into payment but the purpose of tabling the question was to establish how many have been refused by the Department for failing to meet the SAFE 2 requirement. The Minister said this is done "to satisfy the Minister as to their identity". Is she saying a driver's licence or a valid passport, which is internationally recognised, will not satisfy her and SAFE 2 is the only requirement that will?
It is not me personally.
She is the Minister.
On the basis that we spend billions of euros of taxpayers' money, the Minister and Government decided in 2005 that we needed to have a process to ensure the money went to the people entitled to it. That SAFE 2 process was ratified in 2005 by the then Government and became law in 2011.
I hate talking about particular people but the person the Deputy refers to was not refused and their payment was not ceased because they did not have a PSC. The payment was ceased because despite numerous attempts to ask that particular person to come in and identify themselves, they did not want to. The law requires that people prove themselves to a level of SAFE 2 identity authentication. That person, for whatever reason, did not feel comfortable doing so. I am happy to say that was resolved and the money was reinstated, and indeed backdated.
There is no conspiracy here. I know some people would like to see a conspiracy. What we need to ensure is that taxpayers' money, generated off the back of everybody's taxes, is sent and directly given to the people entitled to receive it.
The Minister must conclude. I call Deputy John Brady.
The only way we can do that is to make sure people are who they say they are.
I am trying to get in as many Members as possible. Deputy Brady may ask a final supplementary.
I am Deputy Curran.
You would not find me over on those benches.
One never knows.
I am not suggesting a conspiracy and I very much appreciate that it is crucial that a person’s identity be established to the satisfaction of everyone to ensure there is not fraudulent misappropriation of payments. I understand that fully.
The Minister spoke in detail about this case. We were trying to get a sense of how many other people were like this and I asked another question which the Minister did not answer very directly. The Minister spoke about the 2005 Act. That Act has been amended 35 times. It is quite a complex issue for someone to follow because of all the amendments. Is it possible within the Department to identify those people who have either been refused or had payments stopped pending SAFE 2, although I understand they produced other documents such as passports? The Minister did not say whether passports would satisfy the identity issue for the Minister or the Department.
The passport was probably produced under SAFE 1, which was a different level of identity authentication. We have moved to SAFE 2 and a product given under SAFE 1 is not suitable for something that is required to produce an identity reassurance under SAFE 2. I did not make the law. It just is the law and it makes perfect sense given the number of people we have uncovered who are using numerous identities. We have found out since the introduction of this process that there are people claiming for things under different names.
The simple premise behind what we are trying to do is to ensure that taxpayers' money goes to the people entitled to receive it, that they are not getting more than one payment, and that they are getting only the payment to which they are entitled. Nobody has had a payment taken away because they did not have a PSC. People are invited to identify themselves under the SAFE 2 process and if they refuse for a prolonged period, we have to assume either they have left the country or have passed away. There can be a variety of reasons. There have not been very many cases. I do not have the data today. We do not keep it because it is fluid. Normally, as soon as the payment is stopped, the person rings to ask what has happened, is invited in and the payment is reinstated and backdated.
The Minister needs to watch the clock.
We need to make sure taxpayers' money is going to the people who are entitled to get it.
Question No. 48 replied to with Written Answers.
Fuel Allowance Payments
John Brady
Question:49. Deputy John Brady asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection her plans to review the rates of payment and the periods of time for which the fuel allowance is paid by her Department; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8342/18]
What are the Minister’s intentions to review the payments of the fuel allowance and their duration? When we debated the Social Welfare Act 2017 I tabled an amendment to ensure she would carry out a review and use the information with a view to potentially extending or increasing the payment.
The fuel allowance is a targeted payment of €22.50 per week, paid for the duration of the fuel season from October to April, and over 338,000 low income households benefit from this allowance, at an estimated cost of €227 million in 2018. The purpose of this payment is to assist these households with their energy costs, not to pay their full energy costs. One allowance is paid per household representing a contribution towards the energy costs of a household; it is not intended to meet those costs in full. In October 2017, I introduced the option for qualified households to receive their fuel allowance payment in two lump sums, as opposed to weekly, in October and in January. This allows people to buy fuel in bulk and potentially avail of special offers or discounts on the purchase of the particular fuel that meets their specific needs. In budget 2018, I increased the duration of the fuel allowance season by only one week - I would like to have done more - to 27 weeks. This is longer than the winter period in Ireland, and provides assistance during what are largely colder weeks when heating costs are expected to be at their highest.
Any changes to the scheme, in terms of the rate of payment or the duration of the fuel allowance season, would have to be considered in the overall policy and budgetary context for 2019.
There are strong links between low income unemployed people and fuel poverty. Single person households, lone parents and older people are more susceptible to fuel poverty. It is estimated that a colossal 28% of homes across the State are experiencing fuel poverty of one degree or another. This is the responsibility of several Departments but specifically the Minister's Department. She touched on the fact that it administers the fuel allowance. It was unfortunately cut from 32 weeks to 26 weeks in 2012. It is back up now, thankfully, to 27 weeks. The payment rate, €22.50 per week, does not go far enough because of the increase in fuel costs. Last year, electricity and gas costs went up by 5%. The cost of bottled gas has gone up colossally. Home heating oil has also gone up by 13%. The fuel allowance payment would go a considerable way to lift people out of fuel poverty so that they are not afraid to turn on their home heating, be it oil or gas. The Minister indicated that there would be a review. Will she outline what that review will entail?
The Deputy is almost asking me what I will have for my dinner next Tuesday and I do not know what I will have for my dinner tonight. I cannot tell him what will happen in the context of budget conversations because they have not started. I know he is as keen as I am to get this sorted and have a substantial effect on the households he is talking about, but he also knows I want to do that too. He will have to be patient. It is only February and the next budget negotiations will not start until next September. Other payments are available, such as a special heating supplement to assist those who in certain circumstances have special heating needs. There is also the exceptional needs payment where a person with exceptional needs can go weekly to the local social welfare or Intreo office and be looked after.
Income is only part of the answer to fuel poverty. The best way to tackle it in the long term is to make sure we have energy efficient homes with proper household insulation. We will make sure that schemes such as the warmer homes scheme, operated by Sustainable Energy Ireland, SEI, are rolled out to the entire country and that we provide grants and supports to make sure it costs people less to heat their homes, and that they are not daily portioning out their bags of coal, as described to us all. We need to make sure in the round that we give enough money to buy it and to make it less expensive to heat homes.
I am not asking the Minister to get into the specifics of budget 2019 but we need to be realistic. The payment does not go far enough. In 2010, a 40 kg bag of coal cost in the region of €13.50 and that now stands at €20 or thereabouts. A bale of briquettes was approximately €2.99 and now it costs approximately €4.80. Energy costs have gone up considerably. I agree that retrofitting homes needs to happen but it is not happening quickly enough for many of the families we are talking about.
The fuel allowance payment is a very targeted measure that can be used. The Minister indicated previously that there would be a conversation within the Department to have a look at the payments and the length of time involved. Will she clarify what it is she is looking at in that regard? I am not looking for information on what kind of internal conversations are going on about budget 2019. I am trying to discover what analysis is being carried out now.
At the risk of repeating myself, I must reiterate that it is an allowance and that it is not supposed to pay for people's entire energy costs. I do not want to be smart but I am only working on the project at the moment. When I am finished working on it and examining the effects of fuel poverty on certain families in Ireland, I will then be better armed to know how I can alleviate that. I am not sure exactly what Deputy Brady wants me to say. Does he want to know exactly the meetings I am having next Tuesday? I am sorry. I am being facetious. I should not be so disrespectful. I am examining the issue and conducting my own research. We will input that research into policy decision-making when we come to negotiate the budget for next year. That may result in changes. However, changes may not be necessary because other Departments may be taking measures.
As I have already said, it is not our responsibility to provide money to pay for people's entire energy costs. The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection provides income supports. I have just listed a range of those supports. The Department also increased the living alone allowance and the telephone allowance. We are acknowledging that people who live on their own find it more difficult with only a fixed income coming into the house. We acknowledge and respect the fact that they have the same outgoings. It may not be 100% but they have a lot of the same outlays as households with two or three people.
Questions Nos. 50 and 51 replied to with Written Answers.
Public Services Card
Joan Collins
Question:52. Deputy Joan Collins asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if the public services card is mandatory or compulsory; and her views on whether elderly persons and other persons depending on social welfare payments should have their payments terminated for not agreeing to accept the card. [8306/18]
My question is a follow up to that posed by Deputy Curran. I do not know why the questions were not grouped. I met a lady last week who said she had asked for legal direction as to why she had to go through the process of getting a public services card. She had proof of identity, she was able to produce her passport and her marriage certificate and she did not get her payment. There has to be some clarity regarding this process. People do not understand exactly what it is they are required to do.
It is not mandatory or compulsory for anybody in the State to have a public services card. It is not mandatory or compulsory for one person to have a card.
It has, however, always been necessary for people using high-value or personalised public services, which are now considered to be online public services, to be able to prove their identity. In order to ensure that services are provided to the right person and to support efficient service delivery, a growing number of public service providers, including my Department, require that proof of identity is underpinned by the SAFE 2 identity verification standard. This standard verifies identity to a substantial level of assurance and is the most robust identity verification in Ireland today. The requirement for this level of identity verification is provided for at section 247C of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005, as amended, in respect of customers of my Department.
The Department needs to verify the identity of customers to a substantial level of assurance to ensure that they are who they claim to be, to ensure that they are not being impersonated by anybody else, to ensure that they are not claiming services or payment in another identity and to minimise the need for them to prove their identity over and over again when they interact with other parts of government or service providers. This verification also provides the customer with access to an increasing range of online public services without he or she having to physically go and provide paperwork to show his or her proof of identity.
For the most part, the SAFE 2 registration process is very easy and straightforward and simply verifies the identity information the public service already has for a person. It is a different level of identity verification than SAFE 1, the level at which some of the documents referred to by Deputy Joan Collins were administered and issued. At the end of the process, if a person wants a public services card, we will print it and send it in the post. If, however, he or she does not want a card, nobody will make him or her have it.
There is a contradiction here. If a person does not provide the necessary SAFE 2 level identification - not the SAFE 1 level - then that person does not have a public services card. Is the SAFE 2 level saying that a person has to have a public services card? Will the Minister clarify if a person could use his or her passport or driver's licence? I shall give an example. The number of services for which a person must have the public services card is growing. These services include social welfare payments, child benefit, school transport, treatment benefits, driving licence applications, age verification, school grant appeals and online health and Revenue portals. The next phase of development is coming in March. I do not have a public services card and I do not want one. I have my passport, which has always been a valid document for identification purposes to access these services. Is the Minister saying that the next phase, which is SAFE 2 level, will deprive people such as me, or an old age pensioner who does not want the card, access to those services?
I have a habit of making things more confusing than they were in the first place, so I apologise. There is no requirement to have a public services card. It is only a by-product and people are only given cards to prove that they have undergone the SAFE 2 process and passed. If a person does not want a card, nobody will make him or her get it. Nobody can ever ask him or her for the card and there is no legal basis for a person being asked for the card. If a person wants the card, brings it home and puts it in a drawer and it never sees the light of day again, then this is game ball. If a person does not want the card, then we will not print or make a card for that individual. It is, however, underpinned by law that a person has to undergo the SAFE 2 process. SAFE 2 is a more robust method of proving a person's identity than SAFE 1. When the Deputy obtained her passport, she would have been adjudicated under the SAFE 1 process, but we now have a more robust mechanism to ensure that Joan Collins is Joan Collins. This is called SAFE 2. It means that a person comes in with the required documentation and it allows us to take his or her photograph and run it through the system to make sure that nobody else is using the same identity. It is a different and more secure level of verifying a person's identity. When a person is invited to go through the SAFE 2 process, he or she is obliged, under the law, to do so. The letter to come in is sent out and the person will not be cut off after 20 minutes. We will send another letter and another. We will try repeatedly to encourage people. There are many people who get the letters and just put them in the bin. The identity verification is about the process, not the card.
Can I make a suggestion? If Deputy Joan Collins will forfeit her second supplementary question on this matter, I can take her next question with one supplementary question. That is if she so wishes. She has been here all day.
Yes, I will. It follows on from this question.
Questions Nos. 53 and 54 replied to with Written Answers.
Public Services Card Data
Joan Collins
Question:55. Deputy Joan Collins asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if it is a legal requirement to accept a public services card if a card is needed to legally access some services; if the single customer view can be legally used for data sharing; if so, the legislation in this regard; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8338/18]
The public services card is simply the token that proves that a person, Joan Collins for example, has completed the SAFE 2 level process and that she is Joan Colllins. The card is only a by-product or a token of having gone through that standard. There are 50 public bodies - or their agents - detailed and listed in the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005, as amended, that can ask a person for the public services card. This is mostly so they can do business with the public over the phone or online. If Deputy Joan Collins has public services card No. 123456 and if she quotes her number to SUSI, for example, during a telephone conversation, SUSI will know who she is because it has access to the dataset which shows that Joan Collins has undergone the SAFE 2 process and that there is no need to ask her for any further identification, such as a driving licence, a public services card, a passport or an ESB bill. None of that will be required because we will already know that Joan Collins is who she says she is and then the SUSI application can be processed. When we are assured of a person's identity by means of SAFE 2, it allows access to a whole range of services offered by the 50 public bodies and their agents. This makes dealing with Government easier than it used to be.
With respect to the Minister, she is saying that the public services card, PSC, is going to become the predominant identification for accessing public services and beyond. I was talking to a young lad recently who wanted to apply for a driver's licence. He was told that he had to have a PSC. That means that there is a requirement for a PSC in that contradictory sense which the Minister has used, that is, that it is compulsory but not mandatory.
It is a requirement.
It confuses the issue. There is huge concern that this is a sneaky way around introducing a national identification card. A similar process happened in Britain. They had a card called the entitlements card, which sounds very much like the PSC which was introduced here in 2005. The point was raised that additions have been made to that 2005 legislation 35 times, so many people do not know where they stand under it. If we are going to bring in a national identity card we should have that debate. If I go to get a driver's licence in two years' time and am told that I have to have a PSC to prove my identity, then the card is mandatory.
I have defended the PSC, I have said that it is not an identity card and I have listed all the reasons as to why it is not, including that nobody can ask a person for it. One can never be walking down the road and be stopped by someone demanding that one show one's PSC. Nobody has the authority to ask a person for their PSC. The only thing that bodies have the authority to do is to allow one to offer it in order to be able to access public services, particularly online public services. I minced some words - compulsory, mandatory, requirement. A person cannot access valuable public services unless we know that person is who he or she claims to be. That service could be the provision of a passport or a driving licence. These are very valuable documents. In order for us to issue a licence or passport to Joan Collins, Joan Collins has to have gone through the SAFE 2 process so that the State knows that she is Joan Collins.
For the record, although it would not be my remit anyway but that of another Department, neither I nor the Government has any interest in having a debate about introducing a national identification card. I do not think we should have a national identification card in this country for all the same reasons the Deputy thinks we should not. This card is a by-product of a system that was introduced in 2005 and which was underpinned by legislation in 2011 whereby, when Joan Collins is invited in to prove she is who she claims to be, she reaches a level or standard that is so robust that we can ensure that there are no other Joan Collins's in the world or in Ireland claiming to be her and that she is not claiming to be anybody else. We are just trying to ensure that the taxpayer's money is being given and directed, through the services, to people who are who they say they are.
Written Answers are published on the Oireachtas website.