Ms Caroline Fahey:

I will start with the issue of community welfare officers referring people to the SVP. Our members work very closely with community welfare officers at a local level because much of the time, they are helping the same people. It is important to acknowledge the pressure on the community welfare service because of the extra demands and so on. Having said that, there seems to be a tightening up of the flexibility community welfare officers used to have where they could look at a person's particular circumstances and help him or her out even though he or she perhaps did not fall into any particular bracket. In some cases, community welfare officers refer people to us and, similarly, we refer people to them. It is not entirely negative because we want to ensure we are helping people to the best extent we can. However, it is important for community welfare officers to be able to be flexible with people and to meet their needs as they present. The SVP should be the absolute last resort after the State has come in and done what it can to help people. We should be there as the last resort rather than the first person to call.

In terms of the changes for one-parent families, when the one-parent family payment was brought in, it had features to encourage and support people in taking up employment - that is, people with caring responsibilities who might not be able to take up a well-paid full-time job but who still wanted to be in the labour force, because the poverty in one-parent families is concentrated among those who are entirely reliant on social welfare. One-parent families which can work are doing somewhat better. However, the changes, particularly to the earnings disregard, mean that people are not able to earn as much as they were and to keep some of their one-parent family payment. The amount of money people will lose as a result of that is colossal, in particular for those who are earning lower amounts of money. If one is earning €200, one loses quite a lot. However, one is still losing perhaps €50 per week even if one is earning €400. When we got those responses to the parliamentary questions, we really felt the features of the one-parent family payment which supported employment were being taken away and, of course, that is a disincentive to employment. It means some people will not be able to keep their jobs. That is the bottom line. With one in five children living in a jobless household, it will contribute more to that problem. We are asking Government to stop taking away the earnings disregard. The plan is to bring it down to €60, which is the same as that which applies to jobseekers, but that does not reflect the fact that people who are parenting alone have a particular set of needs that people who do not have a child relying on them would have.

I refer to family income supplement. These things all connect up, so because of the changes to the one-parent family payment, FIS is even more important. In the report of the advisory group on tax and welfare, we were very concerned to see that the proposal was to replace FIS with another payment which would be paid at a lower rate. If people can get family income supplement, it is a huge benefit to them as it provides considerable support. This lower payment would not do the same. FIS is not perfect. Many people who are eligible for it do not seem to be taking it up but we do not feel the solution is to abolish it, especially when we are saying to one-parent families that we will take away their one-parent family payment. Family income supplement can make up for much of that difference, and if it was gone there would be an even worse problem.

There was a massive advertising campaign around the digital switchover. We have huge campaigns around the television licence. Perhaps something could be looked at in regard to the family income supplement. There are other ways in which it could be given to people. We would like to see some proposals on a refundable tax credit to support families in low-paid work. We are not saying FIS is perfect, but do not abolish it until something better is in place to support those families.

With regard to child poverty, child benefit has been reduced considerably in the past number of years.

We know from the advisory group's report that 80% of children are in families that earn less than €80,000. When we talk about child benefit, the focus is always on high income families who get the payment. We need to focus, however, on what the changes are doing to low and middle income families who get the payment, that is, the majority of families. We are advocating for no further cuts to child benefit because it is an anti-poverty measure and the payment has been cut so much already.