Burton blames delay in school aid payments on jobless surge

SOCIAL Protection Minister Joan Burton has blamed a surge in unemployment numbers on a lengthy delay in processing children’s and footwear allowances.

Thousands of families now look set to have to wait until October — after the school year begins — before welfare payments for children’s clothes are delivered by her department.

The news has prompted the Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP) to warn that the delay will see children going into classrooms without the appropriate clothing.

Schools have been asked by SVP to make allowances for pupils who might have to return to class without school uniforms.

The society has also warned that families waiting on payments may fall into arrears with other bills or use moneylenders in order to pay for clothing and footwear for school.

Officials with the minister’s department have been asked SVP to clear the backlog of applications and for payments through community welfare officers for parents who will not receive their children’s allowances in time.

SVP’s national president, Máiréad Bushnell, has said that parents are “really panicking” over the delay.

It was confirmed yesterday that up to 3,000 applications a day for clothes and footwear allowances were being logged by families up until last month.

Ms Burton’s department yesterday said 71,000 applications by parents had been accepted since the start of July. “The big change in social welfare is that we have 47,000 more people unemployed. These are people who made new applications.

“Those applications have to be assessed, they have to be examined. We have a process and I’m absolutely confident that everybody who is entitled to that support will get that support. It takes time.”

Ms Burton said her department had taken on extra staff and a phone line for allowance applications was also in operation.

“The number of applications is now falling. It’s down to about 1,000 a day. The demand in terms of this scheme is enormous,” she told Newstalk 106fm’s Breakfast Show.

She also warned that some people applying for school allowances were not entitled to them.

Her department said last night that, of the 71,000 claims received since July, 27,500 of them had been processed. Of these, 21,000 had been paid, it said.

Some 2,000 were also refused, 3,700 returned because there was insufficient information and another 700 were duplicate claims.