The delay in processing the Back to School Allowance by the HSE will see a number of families in Mayo put to the pin of their financial collar, according to a number of Mayo politicians.
Labour Party Castlebar town councillor and teacher Harry Barrett has hit out at the delays saying that it is creating a two tier society in education. “You are going to have children going back to school next week and there will be those who have and those who have not,” he told the Mayo Advertiser. “The delay in processing these payments will create a two-tier society like we have in the health service; if you have money you can get what you need, but if your struggling you can’t. These payments are for families to ensure that their children can have the right uniform and footwear for going back to school, there are a number of families who are struggling quite a bit right now and the delay in these payments is only going to increase the pressure on them.”
Cllr Barrett went on to say that this is the cost people are paying for bailing out the banks. “This news came around the time that we heard we might have to give another €10 billion,” he said. “But this is the price we are going to keep end up paying, every time you give €1 billion to a bank another programme is going to be cut and the delay in this payment is hurting the most vulnerable. Children will feel stigmatised because they don’t have the new uniform or shoes, it’s not the children’s fault. We have 13,000 people on the live register in Mayo, that is a huge number of families who are struggling to get by and now they have been stretched even further.”
Fine Gael Deputy Michael Ring also hit out at the delays. “Thousands of families across Ireland will have no State support before their children go back to school because the Fianna Fáil/Green Government has botched the Back to School Allowance,” Dep Ring said. “More than 60 per cent of families in some parts of Ireland have still not received the Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance. Delays in processing claims from hard-pressed families mean that many have still received little or no State support for new school uniforms, shoes, or books. The Government should be doing more, like encouraging more schools to standardise uniforms or to set up book rental schemes. Such measures would go a long way towards bringing down the huge cost of sending children back to school.”
The processing time for applications in the western region, including Mayo, has more than doubled from 11 days to up to 30 days, and more than half of the families who had applied for the means tested clothing and footwear scheme in the western region had yet to receive payments, with schools opening next week. The HSE was forced to draft in extra personnel this week to deal with the problem.
