The family income supplement is a weekly cash payment to low paid employees with families. The scheme provides an incentive to those on low pay to remain in employment. When it was introduced in 1984 it was felt that the self-employed, including farmers, had less incentive to give up work and claim an unemployment payment, as they had no entitlement to unemployment benefit. As a result, the self-employed were excluded from the scope of the scheme.
At present, low income farmers can benefit from smallholders unemployment assistance. From July of this year, for example, a married farmer with three children will be entitled to a maximum payment of £124 per week. This represents a 34.6 per cent increase over the period 1987 to 1991.
The question of extending FIS to farmers must be considered in the context of a possible extension to self-employed workers generally. This would represent a major change in the emphasis of the scheme and would give rise to a considerable cost to the Exchequer. Such a major decision would have to take into account other measures to aid low income farmers. The Deputy will be aware that my colleague, the Minister for Agriculture and Food, is at present considering a scheme of income aid to low income farmers, for which £1 million has been provided in his Department's 1991 Estimate.
I intend to review the possible extension of FIS to self-employed persons in a budgetary context, in the light of other measures to aid the farming sector, and taking account of available resources.