Where a parent is receiving a pension or other long-term payment from my Department, child dependent allowances – CDAs – are payable up to the age of 22 years or up to the end of the academic year after the 22nd birthday, where the young person remains in full-time education. In the case of short-term payments, CDAs are only paid up to the age of 18. The Government is committed to extending CDAs to all social welfare recipients where the child is under 22 and in full-time education in the lifetime of the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness. In regard to the community employment – CE – scheme and CDAs, the position is that CDAs are paid to CE employees who were, prior to commencing the scheme, in receipt of a social welfare payment which included such allowances. I emphasise that the question of payments under the CE scheme, including CDAs, is a matter for the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, who has overall policy responsibility for the scheme.
Child benefit is a universal payment which is payable in respect of all children up to the age of 16 years and continues to be paid in respect of children up to age 19 who are in full-time education, or who have a physical or mental disability. The policy direction over the past number of years has been to concentrate resources on improving child benefit for all families. Before we came to office, expenditure on child benefit was £397 million annually. Our first three budgets increased this to £575 million, an increase of more than 40%. The child benefit increases provided in the budget for 2001 constitute a full-year investment of £330 million. This is the first of three years of increases which will see investment in the payment rise by £1 billion by 2003. Further enhancements to the child benefit scheme along the lines proposed by the Deputy would be extremely costly and would have to be considered in a budgetary context in light of available resources and other competing priorities.
