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Working Family Payment

Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 13 November 2018

Tuesday, 13 November 2018

Questions (86)

Mary Butler

Question:

86. Deputy Mary Butler asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the reason the working family payment is not eligible for the Christmas bonus; and if she has given consideration to extending this bonus in the short term. [46862/18]

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Written answers

The Christmas Bonus is paid to long-term social welfare recipients, such as pensioners, carers, people with disabilities, lone parents and long term unemployed people, who rely either wholly or mainly on their social welfare payments for financial support. The payment will benefit more than 1.2 million social welfare recipients this year. The Working Family Payment (WFP) is an in-work support which provides an income top-up for employees with children. The Working Family Payment is therefore a supplementary payment rather than a main source of income. It is designed to prevent in-work poverty for workers with child dependants and to offer a financial incentive to take-up employment. According to Eurostat Data, the parental in-work poverty rate in Ireland is less than half the EU average and this is, in large part, due to in-work supports such as the WFP and the Back to Work Family Dividend.

An integral part of the WFP scheme is that once the level of payment is determined, it continues to be payable at that rate for a period of 52 weeks, provided that the person remains in full-time employment. The rate of payment will not change if there is an increase or decrease in the recipient’s earnings. A key advantage of this approach, which is unique to the WFP scheme, is that claimants can be certain that they will receive a guaranteed level of income support throughout the period. The average weekly payment across all families is currently in the region of €135 per week.

There are currently over 54,000 families with almost 122,000 children in receipt of WFP. The estimated spend on WFP for 2018 is approximately €431 million, following the increase in the thresholds provided for in Budget 2018.

WFP recipients have not been eligible for the bonus in the past and any changes to the qualifying criteria for the Christmas Bonus would have to be considered in a Budgetary context.

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