Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

Improvements are also being made to the family income supplement, which is paid to low income working families. Income limits for the FIS are being increased by €10 per week in respect of each child, giving an average extra payment of €6 per child per week.

The income thresholds for entitlement to back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance are also being increased to enable 18,000 more families to benefit from the scheme. These increases are in addition to the special measures already mentioned for 18 year old children. In addition to these improvements in social welfare schemes, the budget also provides an extra €500,000 for the Family Support Agency to support programmes to promote positive parenting skills.

I now want to address the future of the Combat Poverty Agency and the Money Advice and Budgeting Service. A review of the Combat Poverty Agency was undertaken on foot of a Government decision on 6 June 2007. The purpose of the review was to examine the role of the agency in light of the emergence, since 1986, of comprehensive strategies and new institutional arrangements to promote social inclusion. These include the Cabinet committee on social inclusion, the Office for Social Inclusion and the voluntary pillar in social partnership.

Having considered the review report, the Government has decided to integrate the Combat Poverty Agency with the Office for Social Inclusion. I do not intend that the Combat Poverty Agency will simply be absorbed into the Office for Social Inclusion in its existing form. Rather, a new strengthened division will be created, which will make the best use of the considerable experience and expertise of the staff of both existing bodies and will seek to address the weaknesses identified by the review in relation to both.

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