Ms Br?d O'Brien:

There have been proposals for a good number of years around amending the child income supports. A good number of years ago, the NESC compiled a report which looked at that issue in terms of maintaining child benefit as a floor and then in effect using the qualified child increase, QCI, supports. One is a universal payment and the other is paid while a person is on welfare. There have been some supports in more recent years and people can maintain some of those supports if they take up work. However, there can be a challenge if people move from a welfare payment into employment as they have to factor that in. That can be a particular challenge if what is on offer for people is low-paid work. People can also possibly access the working family payment. For us, one of the issues we would like to see is the system being more proactive in informing people of what is there and supporting people to be able to access supports in a more timely fashion. We feel that would help.

Certainly, there have been proposals for a good number of years around redesigning it. We would need to see what was actually being proposed because, as we noted earlier around the pay-related benefit, often one can ask for one thing and what then gets rolled out can be slightly different. That would need to be seen in greater detail. When work has been looked at over the years, there have definitely been swings and roundabouts. It would need to be managed with great care. Unfortunately, often there can be people who might lose out in the change. That would need to be explored carefully in terms of moving forward on that.