Rising costs: Emergency payments double to struggling families
Emergency payments to households to help with the cost-of-living crisis almost doubled last month, with the State spending €5.8m to cover bills.
It has emerged that over half of people who applied for help to cover costs, such as energy bills, had to wait up to four weeks for the payment.
New figures reveal there has been a significant increase in the number of people looking for help from their community welfare officers (CWOs) to pay for bills, clothing, rent, and child-related costs.
Additional Needs Payments (ANPs) are designed to assist people with once-off, exceptional expenditures, in cases where a person cannot pay from their weekly income.
Almost €35m has already been paid out by the State this year on top of the usual social welfare payments.
In September 2021, the State paid out €3.3m, but last month, as the Government was preparing to announce the budget on September 27, the Department of Social Protection paid out €5.8m to households across the country.
Since the start of the year, up until the end of September, almost 66,000 applications for ANPs were processed and awarded, an increase of just under 60% on 2021 figures.
But a spokesman for the Department of Social Protection admitted that around 63% of all applications take up to four weeks to be finalised.
They said this is due to the decision process and the need to “verify household income and expenditure and assess whether or not the expenditure in respect of which the ANP is requested is essential".
“Where an application is complete and accompanied by the required documentation, it is generally processed in a matter of days," the spokesperson said.
“However, where an application is not finalised within this timeframe, the delay is generally due to additional information or documentation being requested from the person to support their application.”
In cases where there is an urgent need, the Department makes every effort to ensure prompt processing of these applications, usually on the same day, the spokesperson added.
The schemes are demand led and payments are made at the discretion of the officers administering the scheme, taking into account the requirements of the legislation and all the relevant circumstances of the case in order to ensure that the payments target those most in need of assistance.
Figures obtained by the Irish Examiner reveal there are currently 323 community welfare officers working in the Department of Social Protection.
However, a breakdown of the number of community welfare officers (CWOs) per county shows there are 10 counties with five or fewer.
Labour TD for Cork East Sean Sherlock said the ability for decision-making by CWOs is being hampered due to increased requests from struggling families as well as low numbers of officers in counties.
He said: "The Additional Needs Payment is fast becoming the tool upon which the Government relies upon to meet people’s rising costs.
“If decisions are increasingly centralised, applications are being reviewed by persons who have no personal or local knowledge of the applicant.
“I would call on the Minister to revert to a system where more discretion is given to the local officer to decide a case.”
Cork has 40 CWOs, Dublin has 82, Limerick has 20 and 15 counties have less than 10 officers dealing with payment requests.
Last month, the State paid out €259,544 to cover people’s bills, a stark rise in comparison to September last year when €91,650 was spent.
There was also a jump in spending on clothing with €486,975 handed out last month when €93,637 was spent in the same period last year.
On housing, the State spent €3.3m to help people cover the cost of their mortgages and rent, an extra €1m in comparison to last year.
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