The scheme allows for payments for orphans, people who become widowed, and women deserted by their husbands. A range of dental and optical services is available to insured workers and their dependent spouses. The social assistance scheme includes payments for people who are unemployed, blind, orphaned, people who reach pensionable age and for lone parents. There are special schemes for working families on low incomes and a supplementary scheme to help people in difficult financial circumstances. A number of schemes are designed to enable the long term unemployed to improve their chances of gaining employment.
Grant schemes exist to support voluntary and community activity.
These include support for locally based women s groups, the Community Development Programme, etc. At the end of 1994 some 820,000 persons were in receipt of a weekly social welfare payment.