Grant cut will hit neediest
FOR Andrea Galgey, the First Communion grant — officially known as the exceptional needs payment — was a godsend.
The mother of three boys didn’t know about the grant when her first son made his Communion — but did for her second, James.
“I heard about it through other lone parents,” Ms Galgey says. She was approved €120 by her community welfare officer: “I bought James a suit for €40 — he got the suit, the shirt, the shoes and the tie all together for €40. It wasn’t great quality but he looked well on the day.”
The money bought new clothes for her other sons, too. “The grant was very useful and I made it go a long way because I was able to use this money for the other boys’ outfits,” she says.
Even though Ms Galgey’s son’s school specified the wearing of their uniform for church services — parents were asked to buy a special tie for €7 — the children wanted new outfits for after the ceremony.
“James had the suit for afterwards because there was a sense of occasion and the boys wanted to dress up. Kids want to feel special on the day,” says Ms Galgey, who lives in Tramore, County Waterford, and is a spokesperson for the newly-formed group, Single Parents Acting for Rights of Kids.
Last year, Ms Galgey was also approved for an exceptional needs payment for the confirmation of another son: “I used it for my eldest son, Philip’s Confirmation. I got €120 and I used it to buy his Confirmation clothes. I put away what was left over to help with the cost of his second-level school uniform and schoolbooks.”
The grant is an allowance under the supplementary welfare allowance (SWA) scheme, operated by the Department of Social Protection. A single payment meets once-off exceptional expenditure to people on social welfare or HSE. Now, the Government is to slash exceptional needs payments for Communions and Confirmations.
The payment is to be cut from an average of €242 to a maximum of €110 and then only for “hardship” cases. Welfare officers have been told to limit payments to the less well-off for religious ceremonies like these, as the Department attempts to cut back on its annual expenditure.
Ms Galgey was grateful for the grant — but, she says, she’d have preferred not to have had to ask for it.
“I know a number of other people who got this grant. They really needed it. Nobody goes to ask for this grant unless they really need it. It’s embarrassing and you feel humiliated having to go and ask for the money. There’s a stigma to it.
“You have to sit around at the community welfare office waiting with everyone else. You have to justify needing it. When you’re a lone parent, you don’t have extra money for any special occasions.
“There are so many forms to fill in to actually get the money. You have to jump through a lot of hoops.
“You have to fill out one form with the CWO, and then get the school to fill out another one and then go back to the CWO to hear the decision.
“I had to get the school to sign a form saying my son was actually making his Communion.”
The grant should not have been reduced in this across-the-board manner, she says: “It should be means-tested. Everyone has different needs.”
Ms Galgey’s youngest son, Errol, will be making his first communion next year — but she won’t be applying for an ENP, because she’s started work on a community employment scheme, and with the cutbacks, she probably won’t be eligible.
In a way, she’s happier to not qualify. “I don’t think I’ll be eligible next year. I really felt the humiliation — I’ve been on the lone-parent benefit for six years and I have been to the community welfare officer three times, once for a furniture grant, once for a First Communion and the last time was last year, when I used it for Philip’s confirmation.”
But while Ms Galgey will have her work on the community employment scheme to fall back on, not everyone is so lucky — there’s a growing fear that some families may be forced to money-lenders by the new restrictions, says Brendan Dempsey, Cork regional president of the St Vincent de Paul:
“I would make the point that this grant is a grant given by the State to people already in dire straits and they are only given the grant after an assessment by the community welfare officer.
“It’s at the discretion of the CWO — there’s no entitlement to it and the CWO knows exactly the family income.”
The money is often used to buy clothes for several members of the family, he says.
“You can buy a first communion dress for €25 or €50, at the moment, but in my experience the dress is the least part of what’s spent.
“We regularly deal with families where the mother’s always in the same clothes and might not have had her hair done for two or three years. Then, along comes a situation where she’s going out with her neighbours and meeting people.
“There’s a sense of dignity involved and she wants to look reasonably well,” he says, adding that often the money must be stretched to cover a hairdo for mum and new clothes for herself, the father and other children.
“The money is actually used to pay for the occasion rather than just the dress,” Mr Dempsey says.
Now that the grant is being severely restricted, those who do not get it from the CWO may seek to top up the loan they will also get from the credit union.
“Where First Communion and Confirmation are concerned, most people would get about €200, though it is up to the CWO. If they don’t get it, they will have to get a loan from their credit union.”
As some credit unions are experiencing difficulties, Mr Dempsey says many of these people may end up going to the over-stretched St Vincent de Paul or to money lenders.
“It’s placing more strain on already scarce resources — our calls for help have doubled since 2009,” he says. The organisation last year spent an estimated €5.5m in Cork compared to €3.5m in 2009.
“We’re concerned about the effect of cutting back these grants — some of these families would get an ENP of €200 and they’d borrow €300 on top of that.
“It could take them a year or two to pay it back to the credit union — now they’ll be borrowing up to €200 on top of it,” he says.
Mother-of-five *Deborah Connolly, who is on a carer’s allowance of €260 a week, is worried about the implications of the cutback. Her partner gets a jobseeker’s allowance of just €250 a week.
She received €200 each for her children’s First Communions.
“I’d usually get about €200 — we’ve had two first communions so far and we got the grant for them, but it goes nowhere.
“For my little girl, for example, the money went on her Communion dress, which was €160 and her shoes €30, and I had to dress the others as well.
“I barely got my little girl dressed, so in the end I went to the Vincent de Paul for help. I don’t work and neither does my partner.
“Things are very tight. The decision to cut back on this grant will slaughter me — this year, I have another boy for Confirmation and next year I’ll have a first communion for my daughter. Then, the following year, I have a first communion for one of my little boys and Confirmation for my daughter and both of them will be within weeks of each other. It’s going to be very tough altogether. I don’t know what I’ll do,” she says.
Ms Connolly hasn’t yet decided how she will manage — she may go to the St Vincent de Paul for help or she may be forced to take out a loan, or both.
“People are extremely worried about having to borrow money in the event of not getting these special payments,” says Karen Kiernan, director of One Family, one of Ireland’s best-known support groups for single parents.
“A lot of poor families on lone-parents allowance go to money lenders for special occasions, which can get them into a very serious and dangerous spiral of debt.
“We’d be quite concerned about this,” she says, adding that One Family strongly recommends that people in this situation consult the Money Advice and Budgeting Service. “People have limited options — the CWO or the St Vincent de Paul. We’re concerned that if someone feels they absolutely must spend a certain amount of money on an occasion, they may go to a moneylender, which is a dangerous thing as they’ll end up in more trouble.
“If CWOs are telling people there is less money available for special occasions like communion and confirmation, it would be good to also advise applicants about not getting into debt — and helpful if they could refer people to MABS and discourage them from going to moneylenders,” Ms Kiernan says.
*Not her real name
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