Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will answer two questions from Deputy O'Dea. First, that used to be the case but the practice was changed earlier this year for a number of reasons. We started looking at lone-parent families and the conditionality that was set and some of the precarious situations some women were put in and we addressed that. We also looked at the practice, which was not universally applied around the country, where some people were including the promise of a payment of maintenance in the overall assessment of means of the income of a household. Promise my eye. We only deal in hard facts so if there is no payment, there is no disregard. One cannot have a disregard that is not coming into a household so the practice has changed.

Deputy O'Dea and I had a conversation last week about our own involvement with the Department in maintenance recovery. I am conducting a review, which is very close to being finalised, as to what our input should be and what the conditionalities should be in particular for one-parent family payments. I expect that to be ready early in the new year and then to make determinations on it. If we are in, we should be all in. If we are not in, then we should be all out. I would value Deputy O'Dea's advice on that when we come back with the report, perhaps after Christmas.

I am not in a position to accept the amendment for two reasons. First, there is no such thing as child maintenance. When court orders are made for maintenance they do not apportion X amount for children. If a maintenance order is made for €200 a week, it is not stated that €27 is for the mammy and the remainder is for the children. A maintenance order is made against the parent that is not living with the children. It would be very difficult for me to determine the impact on child maintenance of what the Deputy is trying to do when there are no data on that.