Mr. Niall Egan:

Absolutely. The better solution from the Department's perspective might be enhanced access to affordable child care, and to reduce the cost for the lone parent to access and take up additional employment while addressing the care issue. The point about the family income supplement is that it has a minimum hours threshold of 19 hours, therefore, depending on the individual circumstances, it already facilitates lone parents' access to employment while still maintaining a caring role.

If I have time I will address the issues about maintenance.