Galway homes awarded over €1.8 million after Storm Éowyn
Over €1.8 million in Humanitarian Aid Assistance (HAS) payments has been awarded to applicants in Galway, the largest amount received of any county.
According to figures provided to The Tuam Herald from the Department of Social Protection, 62,834 HAS claims were received in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn nationally. As of March 13, 22,800 were granted with over 7,000 successful applications coming from around Galway.
The monies paid out are mostly from Stage One claims which provided emergency support payments for food, clothing and personal items in the immediate aftermath of January’s catastrophic storm.
However, there has been some unrest over the number of HAS applications that have been rejected across the Tuam Municipal District. According to Cllr Donagh Killilea at least 4,000 households in the region applied for the scheme.
He believes around five to ten per cent of these applications have been rejected, despite many households being without power or running water for a prolonged period following the storm.
“I’m working on around 30 larger and complex cases at the minute and have gotten calls on this issue by many more concerned people,” Cllr Killilea told The Tuam Herald.
“The system seems to be all over the place, and everyone is struggling to understand why so many applications locally have been rejected.
A lot of people only sent off the original application and did not have a copy they can show us, so it is hard to nail down the exact reason for the rejections.”
The issue of rejected HAS applications was raised in the Dáil last week by Galway East TD Louis O’Hara. He believes that there has been inconsistency in the awarding of payments and a failure to provide clear guidelines on the scheme.
“This is so unfair on people who went without electricity for days and weeks in some cases and spent huge amounts of money,” stated the Athenry TD.
“Many have neighbours who have already been paid after making the exact same claim. It is petty and unnecessary, and the Department is almost making people beg for a payment.”
Having spoken to Minister for Social Protection Dara Colleary, Cllr Killilea is urging anyone who feels they should’ve been approved for the payment to lodge an appeal.
Many applications were sent in without receipts or dates of power outages. He is asking applicants to be more precise when sending off their appeals.
“State the exact dates you were without power and if you didn’t send in receipts last time, please include them in the appeal, so you can prove you had to eat out or stay in alternative accommodation because of the storm.
“It will be difficult for some people as you cannot show receipts for the food lost as a result of having no fridge or freezer, but the more precise detail and proof you can provide, the better chance you have of getting the HAS payment awarded,” Killilea concluded.
Those who are not satisfied with the outcome of their application have been advised to seek a review by writing to SWA Central Review Officer, PO box 700, Dublin 22.