Department underbudgeted for back-to-school costs

Nearly €40m has been spent by the Government to help families with the cost of sending children back to school in 2016.

The €39.8m layout is €1m more than was budgeted for in October 2015 as demand was higher than expected.

Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar had to get Dáil approval at the start of December, as part of a wider social welfare supplementary estimate, to increase the budget for the Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance (BSCFA) by €1.3m.

The BSCFA provides €100 for children aged 4 to 11, and €200 for those in full-time second-level education up to age 22. The Department of Social Protection said the payments are not intended to meet full back-to-school costs.

Despite pressure to begin reversing cuts to the payments — previously €200 for primary school pupils and €305 for older students — Mr Varadkar announced no changes to the rates in October’s Budget 2017.

The final €40.11m allocation for the BSCFA in 2016 may be used up by early next year when the last 170 applications of 55,800 received by his department have been processed.

Most of those outstanding claims depend on separate decisions relating to the entitlement to a qualifying welfare payment for the families concerned.

The bulk of the BSCFA payments were made in mid-July when 108,000 families who automatically qualified received their allowances without having to apply. This €27m was paid in respect of 193,000 children of school-going ages.

In addition to the automatic payments, the department considers applications received up to the end of September each year.

The 45,950 successful claims so far for 2016 represents an 83% approval for those whose applications were already finalised before Christmas.

The likely final figure of 154,000 families to benefit will be close to 6,000 fewer than received the BSCFA in 2015, when around 170,000 had been projected to qualify. When combined with slightly lower average payments than expected, due to numbers and ages of children, the 2015 spend was €3m less than budgeted.

This downward trend was overestimated when the 2016 budget was finalised, requiring Mr Varadkar to seek the extra money from elsewhere within his allocation earlier this month. It was part of a series of changes to the budget for different schemes, determined by demand.

“Like most schemes administered by the department, the BSCFA is demand-led and all qualifying applicants will be paid the allowance,” said the Department of Social Protection.

Mr Varadkar also announced no changes to the qualifying income limits for families to receive the allowance in Budget 2017. He did allocate an extra €5.7m to see school meals provided for more than 50,000 extra children next year, bringing total funding for that programme to nearly €48m.