department of social and family affairs annual report 2006 - Welfare.ie

goal 1: retired and older people
To ensure adequate, secure and sustainable pensions for retired and older
persons and provide additional services in response to changing needs which
allow them to maintain a reasonable standard of living on attaining retirement age
At the end of December 2006 approximately
338,000 people were in receipt of retirement
or old age pensions while just under 62,000
qualified adults and 3,300 children also benefited.
In addition there were almost 1.6 million
recipients of the Households Benefit Package
(Electricity/Gas Allowance, Free Television Licence
and Telephone Allowance) and the Free Travel
Pass, the majority of whom were in receipt of
pensions for older people.
> Service Delivery Modernisation
Programme
In 2006 the Service Delivery Modernisation
(SDM) programme has expanded to encompass
Retirement Pension, Old Age Contributory Pension
(renamed State Pension (Transition) and State
Pension (Contributory) in 2006), Free Travel,
Bereavement Grant and the Overpayment and
Debt management system.
> OBJECTIVE 1
Achieve a high level of customer satisfaction by
delivering social insurance and assistance pensions
and additional services to a high standard.
Some 220,000 existing pensioner customer
records were successfully migrated to the SDM
system and day–to-day work on pension claim
administration is now being processed on the
new system.
goal 1: retired and older people
> Customer Service
Following the decision that persons on Invalidity
Pension would transfer automatically to State
Pension (Contributory) (SPC) on reaching age
66, arrangements for migration of Invalidity
Pensioners to SPC were completed on schedule in
September 2006. Over 9,400 Invalidity Pensioners
were transferred to SPC and received their first
SPC payment on 29 September 2006. Procedures
have been put in place to automatically transfer
Invalidity Pensioners that turn 66 years of age to
SPC on a weekly basis.
Processing times for pension claims improved on
2005 in a majority of pension categories.
For details see Appendix 1 – Status Report on
organisational targets.
> OBJECTIVE 2
Ensure the overall pension system provides a
reasonable level of replacement income for retired
and older persons and their survivors by:
(a) Providing adequate and sustainable state
pensions and
(b) Ensuring extensive, secure and adequate
supplementary pension provision, in
consultation with the Pensions Board.
(a) Providing adequate and
sustainable State pensions
> Budget 2007 increases
Budget 2007 (December 2006) provided for
pension increases of €16 and €20 for contributory
and non-contributory pensions respectively. This
brought the maximum rate of payment for the
contributory pension to €209.30 per week and
the non-contributory payment to €200 per week
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