STATE SYSTEMS for monitoring the payment of entitlements have no way of showing how much a family as a whole is receiving, Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton has revealed.
She was commenting after the release of figures by Labour Party Senator Jimmy Harte which suggested one unemployed married couple with four children were receiving more than €1,700 a week in payments – more than €90,000 a year – under various schemes.
While the department said it did not comment on individual cases, it did note that it was notionally possible that a family could draw down an income of this size provided the family met the eligibility criteria for the various schemes.
“I think most people who are paying tax and working and most people on social welfare would find the level of the payments described as being quite extraordinary,” said Ms Burton.
She said she had been “surprised” by the lack of information available to her regarding household incomes when she joined the department earlier this year.
“We don’t have data in the software structures at the department which enables a whole family’s situation to be looked at at a glance.”
The department’s method of collecting information is based on individuals, she explained, meaning that it did not collect figures for how much a family unit might be receiving when all of their entitlements were combined.
Ms Burton said in the case cited it was likely that the family was also in receipt of payments from the HSE, which operated a separate system to her department.
“The computers and the software in the HSE doesn’t talk to the software in the Department of Social Protection.
“Where the HSE are paying allowances and the Department of Social Protection is paying allowances as well, you would only be able to get a total picture if you had the particular detailed circumstances of the family involved.”
Ms Burton said the limitations of the systems in use were an issue of concern and her department would be looking to update “in particular the software platforms so that we have a whole picture and a complete picture of the income supports that an individual or a family in particular may be receiving”.
Ms Burton added that such a system was a feature of social welfare structures in a lot of other countries. She had previously signalled that the Government may look at the introduction of a ceiling on the level of welfare payments families can receive under various schemes, saying that “these are the kind of issues [families receiving €90,000 on welfare] I would like to have addressed in the comprehensive review of expenditure.”
Although she failed to expand on that point when asked yesterday, she did say that the department needed to look at issues such as that raised by Mr Harte.