More than 500,000 social welfare recipients will not receive their Budget increases next January, as scheduled, because of difficulties with printing the necessary documents in time.
The increases, to be announced by the Minister for Finance Mr McCreevy, in the Budget on December 5th, will not be received by old age pensioners, widows, one-parent families invalidity pension holders until mid-February, rather than the beginning of January.
The Minister for Social Community and Family Affairs, Mr Ahern, explained yesterday that people in these categories receive payment through presenting their social welfare "book" rather than electronically.
The books are printed by one company and every six months a new book is printed for each scheme. "To make changes you have to have a time-lag of six months," said Mr Ahern.
Some 300,000 of the 800,000 social welfare recipients, receiving disability allowances, maternity benefit and supplementary social welfare, will be paid as scheduled, he said. The others will continue to get their unchanged weekly payments. In February they will receive around six weeks back-pay, and a number of them will also get seven weeks' payment in advance, of between £100 and £300.
Mr Ahern said the advance payments were being made to cover the time-lag until the next book is printed. Social welfare payments announced in the Budget were traditionally paid in June but were recently brought back to April. "We looked at sending people a cheque in the post but to get 500,000 addresses correct would have been impossible . . . We opted for this in the end," he said. The Government expect a big boost because of the quick payment of these increases in advance of a general election next year.
The Minister explained bringing the payments back three months to January costs the Exchequer £80 million. This somewhat complicated situation would be exacerbated by the introduction of the euro currency at the same time.
A campaign will be launched shortly, with advertisements and mail-shots, to explain to people exactly what will be happening. "No matter how early we looked at having the Budget we realised we would still have a difficulty because of the book system. We thought about having it in late October or early November, but it would not have solved the problem."
Mr Ahern said payment of increases after next year's Budget would be easier to organise because of changes being introduced to the system.