Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 13:

In page 12, in line 16, to delete “child,”.” and substitute the following:

“child,

(ec) In circumstances where the parents of the child are separated and have been awarded joint custody, the domiciliary care allowance shall be paid to the parent who is in receipt of Child Benefit in respect of that child regardless of the time spent by each parent with that child,”.”.

My amendment relates to cases of joint custody. Sometimes parents, in accordance with the terms of the custody agreement, have equal time with their child. In order to qualify for the domiciliary care allowance, the relevant legislation and regulations provide that one of the parents, or the applicant for the domiciliary care allowance, must spend not less than five nights per week with the child. In practice, and in some cases, this does not happen so I have designed my amendment to deal with the anomaly. Let me outline a particular case. Two people have joint custody and each spends exactly half of his or her time with the child. Therefore, neither can claim the domiciliary care allowance, which is very unfair in the circumstances.