asked the Minister for Social Welfare the number of reviews of recipients of free telephone rental allowance undertaken by his Department for the period 1 July 1986 to 30 June 1987.

7.

asked the Minister for Social Welfare the number of reviews of recipients of free television licences undertaken by his Department for the period 1 July 1986 to 30 June 1987.

28.

asked the Minister for Social Welfare the number of reviews of recipients of free electricity allowance undertaken by his Department for the period 1 July 1986 to 30 June 1987.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1, 7 and 28 together.

The operation of the three schemes in question, i.e. free electricity, free telephone rental and free television licence, is closely linked because they apply to persons with an underlying entitlement to one of a range of payments common to all three.

In fact, receipt of free electricity allowance acts as a passport to receipt of a free TV licence. Although there are some differences in the conditions of entitlement between the free telephone rental scheme and the other two schemes, in practice a single review process is usually sufficient to determine whether a claimant is qualified in each case and separate reviews for each scheme are not therefore necessary.

In the period in question some 40,000 entitlements under the free schemes were reviewed in one way or another. The majority of the reviews, some 28,000, arose by reason of changes to the person's underlying pension entitlement or to changes in the person's family circumstances. About half of these lead to termination of entitlement to the free schemes. The remainder arose as part of the Department's ongoing control and review procedures and about 10 per cent of these reviews resulted in entitlement to the free scheme being withdrawn.

2.