Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Child benefit assists parents with the cost of raising children and it contributes towards alleviating child poverty. Expenditure on child benefit for 2011 is estimated at €2.08 billion in respect of some 1.133 million children. The Government is conscious that child benefit, as a universal payment, can be an important source of income for all families, especially during a time of recession and high unemployment. The social protection system also provides assistance to low income families with children through the payment of qualified child increases on primary social welfare payments and through the family income supplement payment.

In November of last year, the Department published a policy and a value for money review of child income support policies and associated programmes. The review examined the effectiveness and efficiency of child income support payments in meeting policy objectives over the period 1997-2010, including the provision of targeted assistance to families at risk of poverty. The review indicated that child poverty fell, particularly at times when the level of universal support was increased, and that child income support payments, including child benefit, contributed to this reduction. However, the report indicated that better outcomes could be attained through rationalising the current system of child income support payments and selective programmes in particular, in order to provide more consistent assistance to low income families and to encourage parental employment.

The ESRI has also separately assessed the progress on the reduction of child poverty over the period 2004-07 and found that young children under the age of five, children in large households and children in lone parent households experienced substantial declines in their risk of poverty. It is suggested that this pattern of the decline in poverty can be attributed in part to developments in child income support policy, including the increase in child benefit rates over the period.

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The value for money review noted that the provision of effective and efficient supports to families with children is only one part of an adequate and comprehensive strategy for addressing child poverty. Tackling child poverty is a priority for the Government and a key goal of the National Action Plan for Social Inclusion 2007–2016, NAPinclusion. Factors contributing to childhood poverty include living in lone parent households, labour market inactivity of parents, low parental educational attainment and living in households dependent on income supports.

The broader issue of family and child income supports is currently being examined by the advisory group on tax and social welfare, which I established in June of this year. The group has been tasked with recommending cost-effective solutions as to how employment disincentives can be improved and better poverty outcomes achieved, particularly child poverty outcomes.

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