asked the Minister for Social Welfare if he will take steps to ensure that payment of disability and other benefits to recipients in Cork will be made on a fixed day each week.

16.

asked the Minister for Social Welfare if he is aware that failure of his Department to make a payment of disability and other benefits on a fixed day each week and the long delays experienced in the receipt of these payments by recipients cause great hardship in Cork city; and if he will take steps to rectify the situation.

With your permission, a Cheann Comhairle, I propose to take Questions Nos. 15 and 16 together.

I presume the Deputy is referring to disability and occupational injuries benefits as these are the only social welfare benefits not having a fixed day of payment. Claimants to these benefits are required by regulations to furnish medical certificates of incapacity for work, which they may obtain and forward to my Department on the first convenient date after the commencement of the incapacity. Normally some 9,000 medical certificates are received daily at the headquarters of my Department and in all but a very small proportion of cases cheques in payment of benefit due are issued on the date of receipt of the medical certificate. Deferring payment to a fixed date would not improve the position for the beneficiaries.

Is the Minister aware that, as a result of the present system under which payments are made on different days, on occasions as many as ten to 12 days elapse between payments and that this is a great hardship on people with large families? It is something which happens quite often. Would the Minister investigate it with a view to having it settled?

If there is any particular point the Deputy wants investigated, I will ask the Minister to investigate it for him.

The Minister has quite a lot of correspondence from me in his Department on this particular point.