Ms Dearbh?il Nic Giolla Mhic?l:

The key point is that what we are talking about here is removing child maintenance. At the moment, the Department does not make a distinction between child maintenance and other types of maintenance. There is a 50% disregard but all maintenance payments are treated in the same way. There is also a housing disregard, where applicable. As part of the new regime we will have to devise a way of making that distinction between child and other maintenance payments. In some cases, particularly divorce cases where people have gone to court, they will have a court order specifying a certain amount for the child and a certain amount for the spouse. Sometimes people have a mediated agreement making that kind of specification as well, but in other cases we will have to, as part of our new arrangements, define a way of making that distinction. That is something we are looking at, with the intention of doing it in regulations because that is where the current detail is at the moment.