Dr. Claire Keane:

Looking at the changes to lone parent's allowance, the one-parent family payment could be received until a child was 18 years of age or until he or she was 22 years old if in education. There have been massive changes to that. The age limit has been brought back to seven years of age. While there are negative impacts to changing that system, in a way they may not be as large as we thought because working family payment and entitlement to the jobseeker's transition payment is stepping in to close that gap. We will see the impact of tax benefit policy in reducing the income of lone parents. This is one side of what we are looking at - the impact of tax benefit.