Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In general terms it is a very important payment and it does encourage work, with one exception being one-parent families where their youngest child is over the age of seven. I have never been able to get my head around this issue, to be honest. Why are we forcing people onto a jobseeker's transitional payment when their youngest child is aged seven? I have dealt with constituents who have lost a lot of money as soon as the child comes to seven years of age because they had been able to get the working family payment and they can no longer get that once the child reaches seven. It is neither coherent nor fair. The one-parent family payment cut-off should never been cut from that level down to the age of seven. It should have stayed well into the teens and I believe it was age 14 initially. That cliff edge is a real problem. The other issue I have with the working family payment is the fact that people cannot get the fuel allowance. This is another issue.

In her response to my questions, will the Minister address another issue? Through replies to parliamentary questions and so on there has been some talk about reform of working age payments and that there would be a working age payment. There is a reference to it in the Green Paper on disability payments . It is not actually a very helpful reference, to be totally honest, because most people reading the document do not have a clue what it means and particularly when it is still a very abstract concept, even in this institution. I have a sense of what it means, but if reform of the working age payments is happening, what stage is that at? Will the Minister give an update on that?