Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. From talking to a few of the organisations, they view the main aspects of the Bill as being about child maintenance payments and disregarding the means test for social welfare payments. It is no longer required for applicants for the one-parent family payment and jobseeker's transitional payment to make efforts to seek maintenance from their child's other parent. The Bill allows that it is no longer included in means testing. It has not removed other forms of maintenance for means tests, that is, mortgage repayments. Maybe Mr. Hession could come in on that.

The removal of the liable relatives provision and State inspections of maintenance means there is no longer a State function to enforce maintenance. Instead, it would be up to the individual parents to go to the courts to secure maintenance. Is there an outlined plan on this new system, or lack of system, and how it would work? The two main concerns I got from the feedback were that the dissolving of the liable relative unit removes only the State enforcement arm for maintenance and that there is no information given on how a system solely based in the courts would work or how it would deal with the major influx into the courts.

Another point made was that when lone parents' youngest child turns seven, non-resident parents receive a letter saying they need to switch payment of maintenance from the Department to the other parent. When that happens at the moment, there is a 60% drop in maintenance payments after this letter due to non-payment and there is a 50% drop in overall maintenance paid after the youngest turns seven. For every €100, €50 is now recouped by the Department. There is concern that when the liable relatives unit is dissolved and every non-resident parent receives a letter stating the removal of State enforcement of maintenance, we will see that 50% repeated across every lone parent family. What measures are being put in place to ensure custodial parents do not lose out financially when the liable relatives unit is abolished? Have additional resources been allocated to the District Court to support parents who have to seek maintenance when the liable relatives unit is abolished? Why are mortgage payments being treated differently from child maintenance? Does the Department expect parents to forgo court-ordered mortgage payments to access the social welfare payment they would be entitled to? Those are the three main questions I wanted to ask on this Bill.