Mr. Niall Egan:

On the points Deputy O'Dea and Deputy Collins raised about maintenance and FIS, we have examined the figures on that and I will make a couple of points in that regard. It is possible in certain circumstances, usually if they have one child or a small number of children, and it involves a high level of maintenance. Our figures show that many FIS recipients would not necessarily be incentivised to move back to JST but I have to acknowledge that is because FIS currently does not treat maintenance in the same way as our working age schemes. That is because our working age schemes are predominantly for social welfare recipients and it is their core income. Family income supplement is different. It is an in-work benefit designed for people whose main income is their wages from employment. It is something we are aware of and that we can examine in greater detail.

Senator Higgins asked about FIS and JST concurrent payments. The issue here is the disincentive effect. In terms of allowing lone parents on JST to have access to the family income supplement, ideally, we want to help them, even those on the family income supplement, to earn more money so that they transition off family income supplement. We do not want them remaining on those schemes and having a dependency in terms of that in-work benefit. The issue with this is that if a JST recipient received FIS, the benefit for every additional hour they would work would be less than 20%. We then have to factor in the cost to them of taking up that additional hour. They would very likely not be incentivised to increase their hours from work, which, from the Department's policy perspective, would be counter productive to what we are trying to do.