Vol. 561 No. 6
12 Mr. Coveney asked the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the efforts which are being made to trace the ex-partners of people in receipt of a one parent family allowance; the number of staff involved in such tracing; the success of this over the past two years; the number of payments which have been cancelled or reduced as a result of such investigations; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [4866/03]
Applicants for one-parent family payment are required to make ongoing efforts to seek adequate maintenance from their former spouses, or, in the case of unmarried applicants, the parents of their child. Normally, such maintenance is obtained by way of negotiation or by court order, although separated couples are increasingly using my Department's family mediation service which is being progressively extended country-wide. Since 2001, one-parent family payment claimants are allowed to retain 50% of any maintenance received without reduction in their social welfare entitlements, as a further incentive to seek support.
Where social welfare support is being provided to the one-parent family, the other parent is legally liable to contribute to the cost of this payment. In every case where one-parent family payment goes into payment, the maintenance recovery unit of my Department seeks to trace the liable relative involved in order to ascertain whether she-he is in a financial position to contribute towards the cost of one-parent family payment.
This follow-up activity takes place within two to three weeks of award of payment. The number of staff assigned to maintenance recovery activity is kept under review in the context of work priorities generally. Currently a total of 17 staff work directly on maintenance recovery activity, an increase of ten since 2001. At the same time, procedures for dealing with maintenance recovery activity have been reviewed and streamlined. My Department's network of inspectors, as well as the staff of the one-parent family payment scheme area, support the work of tracing and compiling information on liable relatives. The process of securing maintenance contributions from liable relatives has, however, proved to be difficult and protracted. This is the experience of all countries with similar systems in operation. In this regard, it should be borne in mind that the reason the lone parents concerned are seeking income support from the State in the first place is generally because they have been unable to obtain adequate maintenance for themselves and their children from the liable relatives involved.
Nonetheless, my Department has been realising quite significant savings through this system. There are currently 1,037 liable relatives contributing directly to my Department. As a result of maintenance recovery unit activity, savings of €2.1 million were achieved in 2001 and €8.5 million in 2002. These savings are composed of direct cash payments to the Department and of scheme savings, where maintenance recovery activity leads to the reduction or termination of a one-parent family payment. In 2002, a total of 395 one-parent family payments were cancelled while a further 248 payments were reduced as a result of maintenance recovery activity.
