Payment of maintenance is a private matter for the persons concerned and, if they cannot resolve the issue, for the family law courts. Under social welfare legislation, there is a statutory obligation on spouses to maintain each other and their children and on parents to maintain their children. 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 other parent of their child. Normally, such maintenance is obtained by way of negotiation or by court order. In recent years, separated couples have increasingly used my Department's family mediation service to resolve differences.
Since 2001, one-parent family payment claimants are allowed to retain 50% of any maintenance received without reduction in their social welfare entitlements. This arrangement arose from a recommendation made in a review of the one-parent family payment scheme carried out by my Department in the context of the expenditure review programme which was designed to improve the incentive to seek maintenance.
Current records indicate that approximately 7,000 one-parent family payment recipients are in receipt of maintenance from their spouse or the other parent of their child. Where social welfare support is being provided to the one-parent family, the other parent is liable to contribute to the cost of this payment. In every case where a one-parent family payment is made, the maintenance recovery unit of my Department seeks to trace the liable relative involved to ascertain whether he or she is in a financial position to contribute towards the cost of the one-parent family payment. This follow-up activity takes place within two to three weeks of award of payment.
All liable relatives assessed with maintenance liability are notified by the Department and issued with a determination order setting out the amount of contribution assessed. The Department requires regular, normally weekly, payment of the contributions assessed in this way. The process of securing maintenance contributions from liable relatives can, however, be difficult and protracted. This is also the experience of all countries with similar systems in operation.
Nonetheless, my Department has realised significant savings through this system. There are 1,835 liable relatives contributing directly to my Department. As a result of maintenance recovery unit activity, savings of €8.5 million were achieved in 2002, €14.2 million in 2003 and savings for 2004 are estimated to be €14.9 million. As a result of maintenance recovery activity in 2004 to date, a total of 646 one-parent family payments were cancelled while a further 426 payments were reduced.
Legislation allows my Department to seek recovery from liable relatives through the courts in appropriate cases. To date, a total of 152 cases have been submitted for court action from 2001. The majority of these cases have resulted either in orders being written against the liable relative in court or in the liable relative agreeing to pay a contribution to either my Department or the lone parent. Further cases are in the course of preparation by my Department for court action.
The maintenance recovery unit of my Department is kept under review. A total of 12 staff work on maintenance recovery activity while a further five staff work on follow-up maintenance recovery-related work in the one-parent family payment scheme. The staffing levels in the unit are kept under review in the context of work priorities generally and available resources.
