Full-time students to receive final Covid-19 payment on Tuesday

Students who will be in full-time education for the coming academic year will receive their final pandemic unemployment payment on Tuesday.

This comes ahead of reductions in the top three rates of the pandemic unemployment payment which are scheduled to come into effect next week.

The Department of Social Protection said students currently receiving the benefit and who had advised it that they were or would be in full-time education in the upcoming 2021/2022 academic year would receive their final pandemic unemployment payment on Tuesday, September 7th.

It also said other planned changes to the pandemic unemployment would take effect from next week. The top three rates of the pandemic unemployment payment will be reduced by €50 under the changes.

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The department said the maximum weekly rate of €350 would reduce to €300.

The existing rate of €300 is to reduce to €250 while the current rate of €250 will fall to €203. It said these new revised rates would reflected in payments received by claimants on Tuesday, September 14th.

However the department said “the process of transitioning of people who are on the lower €203 rate of pandemic unemployment payment to jobseekers is being deferred”.

It said this would be put back until after all sectors had started to reopen in line with the roadmap announced on August 31st.

The department said on its website it would write to all affected people to outline the options available to them until the end of September rather than from early September as had been planned.

Two further changes to the rates of the pandemic unemployment payment are scheduled to take place from November 16th 2021 and 8th February 2022.

The department has said more than €8.3 billion had been paid out in pandemic unemployment payments since the scheme was introduced in March last year.

More than 143,000 people received the pandemic unemployment payment last week.

At its peak in late April/early May 2020, more than 600,000 people were receiving the payment