Dr. Naomi Feely:

l will come in on the income support piece. I take the Deputy's point about the existing structures and what might be of benefit, particularly to one-parent families. We advocated for an increase in the child support payment in the Child Poverty Monitor, in particular targeted at children over 12. We would like to see a minimum of a €12 increase in the over-12s rate and a €5 increase in the rate for under-12s, but that would just be the minimum we seek.

The point the Deputy makes about one-parent families is very interesting and relates to the one she raised about maintenance. When we are introducing increases in the budget, we need to think about this holistically. In 2020, there was an increase in the earnings disregard for the one-parent family payment, which meant that those families could work for a certain number of hours per week on the national minimum wage. However, now that the national minimum wage has increased, they get a reduced benefit. They can only work for 12 hours now. I am not sure whether the previous figure was 16 hours or 20. I will come back on that.

What happened in respect of maintenance and the means test disregard last year was very welcome. However, this is another area where it does not really make sense because we can see that it is not disregarded in the calculations for NCS. Some but not all local authorities are looking at that when calculating differential rent. We need to bring in holistic measures, and it is critical that we take a cross-government approach.