Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 30 September 2015
27. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection her Department's plans to undertake an impact assessment on the cuts made to the one-parent family payment, especially in view of the extra expenses incurred by families upon the return to school. [33039/15]
View answerThe Department monitors on an ongoing basis all social welfare income support schemes including the one-parent family payment scheme.
One of the key aims of the one-parent family payment scheme reforms is to maximise the opportunities for lone parents to enter into and increase employment by providing them with enhanced access to the wide range of education, training, and employment supports that make up the Department’s Intreo services.
Lone parents continue to be more at risk of poverty than the rest of the population. However, research has shown that being at work reduces the at-risk-of-poverty rate for lone parents by three-quarters – compared to the at-risk-of-poverty rate for lone parents who do not work.
The Department has published a social impact assessment of the main social welfare and tax measures of Budget 2015 as well as of the water charges. The assessment found that the household incomes of employed lone parents will increase by almost 0.8 per cent, while those of unemployed lone parents will rise by some 0.6 per cent. This positive outcome for lone parents reflects the increase in the child benefit payment, the partial restoration of the Christmas bonus, and the reduction in the universal social charge.
It has not been possible for the Department to capture the full impact of the one-parent family payment scheme reforms by using the Switch model. It is hoped that this will happen as part of the on-going development of the aforementioned model.
It should be noted that the vast majority of lone parents who transitioned from the one-parent family payment onto the jobseeker’s transitional payment or the jobseeker’s allowance payment should have automatically received the back to school clothing and footwear allowance in July of this year.
As I have previously stated in the Dáil, I will be examining the various supports that are available to all families with children, including lone parent families, in Budget 2016. In particular, I will be looking at the scope for improvements in both the child benefit payment and other supports for families that are engaged in both full-time and part-time employment.
