Joe Walsh
Ceist:309 Mr. J. Walsh asked the Minister for Social Welfare the number of lone parents in receipt of maintenance under court orders; the average rate of such payments; and the rate of default on such payment. [12650/95]
Written Answers. - Social Welfare Payments.
The Department has no information on court orders generally in respect of lone parents. Its information is limited to those in receipt of social welfare payments of which the principal payment is the lone parent allowance.
Lone parent's allowance is a means-tested payment and account is taken of any income a lone parent might have, including payments received under court maintenance orders. While the Department's computer records contain information on means levels for payment purposes, a breakdown on the source of the means is not available from these records. The information which the Deputy is seeking is only available in the individual claim files relating to applicants. It would not be practicable, in view of the numbers involved (over 44,000) to extract this information.
However, in operating the "liability to maintain family" provisions of the Social Welfare Acts, the Department has examined the detailed situation of some 4,000 cases involving deserted wife's benefit and lone parent's allowance where the partner was in employment. From this examination, the indications are that Family Law Court maintenance orders exist in 62 per cent of these cases.
It appears that over half of these orders were in default to varying extent by the maintenance debtors concerned. The average value of each court maintenance order transferred to my Department was £51 per week in 1995 to date. These figures need to be interpreted with extreme caution and should not be used to extrapulate general conclusions as they relate to specific cases — i.e. working liable relatives — where court orders are most likely to arise and would not be fully representative either of all court orders made under family law, or of all separated couples.