Vol. 546 No. 3
302 Mr. Durkan asked the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs the extent to which he has identified poverty traps caused by various qualification thresholds or guidelines; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31925/01]
Considerable progress has been achieved in recent years in reducing the incidence and effects of poverty and unemployment traps in the social welfare system. Among the measures which have contributed to this improvement are: the continued enhancement of child benefit as part of a strategy of making child income support more neutral vis-à-vis the employment status of the parents; the introduction of net income assessment for the purposes of determining entitlement to family income supplement, FIS; the introduction of a more tapered qualified adult allowance, which provides for the retention of the allowance at a reduced level when the spouse or partner of a social welfare claimant takes up work or gets a pay increase; a more tapered withdrawal of supplementary welfare allowance rent or mortgage supplements and the introduction of an income disregard of £25 – 31.74 – for those in part-time work.
On a general level, my Department constantly monitors the operation of its schemes with a view to ensuring that poverty traps and employment disincentives are removed. This is in line with the national anti-poverty strategy which identifies tackling unemployment as one of the key areas for helping people out of poverty. In this context, I have introduced a number of further measures in the budget for 2002 which will minimise poverty traps in the system where they still occur. First, the FIS income limits are being increased by approximately £27 – 34.28 – at each point, adding an extra £16 – 20 – on average to the payments of existing recipients. Second, I have substantially increased the rates of qualified adult allowance and raised the upper income limits governing entitlement to these payments. Third, I have increased the income disregard under rent supplement which applies to earnings from part-time work from £25 – 31.74 – to £39.38 – 50.
Notwithstanding these improvements, I am sure the Deputy will appreciate that poverty traps can feature in any system which is based on income thresholds. Nevertheless, I am confident that the measures outlined have had the effect of greatly reducing the incidence and extent of the poverty traps and ensured that they can only arise significantly further up the income distribution than was the case previously.
Question No. 303 answered with Question No. 64.
