Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

The programme for Government has a commitment to explore the targeted child benefit payment. Regarding Deputy O'Reilly's last remark, we have four years remaining in the lifetime of the Government. We will implement the programme for Government and I assure the Deputy that I am doing a check against delivery and will provide it to the committee on 23 January next.

As regards the specific amendment, we are focused on reducing child poverty through co-ordinated actions across many Departments. That is why we have a Cabinet committee looking at this. The ESRI has proposed a model for the second tier of child benefit that would abolish the existing child support payment and remove the core conditions of the working family payment. That would involve a net cost of €770 million per year.

The ESRI estimates that its proposed second tier of child benefit could potentially reduce the child at risk of poverty rate by approximately 4.6%. Under the model, however, some 100,000 children would see a reduction in their respective households' disposal incomes. We also have concerns regarding the potential impact of the ESRI proposal on work incentives. We need to ensure that the potential second tier of child payment has the impact we all want it to have, that is, to address that child poverty rate to help those families with children most in need, but not to result in those kinds of consequences in terms of that level of children.

We are carefully considering all the impacts and the ESRI is one approach to reducing child poverty. There are a range of possible approaches and we are going through all those within the Department in advance of next year's budget. In the meantime, we have introduced record increases in the child support payment in this budget, which this legislation is providing for, with over- and under-12s getting specifically big increases. We have increased the working family payment and extended the fuel allowance to those on that payment, which should benefit some 50,000 families.

We are focused. We are not just leaving the problem there. We have invested significantly in the child support payment, the working family payment and the fuel allowance. We are considering what a second-tier payment might look like but I do not want to introduce it - we are going through all of these options - at the cost of some 100,000 children.