Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The one parent family payment, OFP, scheme supports 71,095 recipients at an estimated cost of €865 million in 2014. The reforms to the scheme to reduce the maximum age limit of the youngest child for receipt of the payment to seven years of age from July 2015 and to reduce the scheme’s income disregard to €60 per week by January 2016 are provided for in the Social Welfare and Pensions Act 2012. Budget 2015 maintains the OFP personal rate of €188 per week, with €29.80 per week payable for each qualified child. In addition, the rate of child benefit per child will increase from €130 to €135 per month in January - a measure that will benefit over 611,000 households with children, including OFP recipients.

I am pleased to say I am partially restoring the Christmas bonus this year. A bonus of 25% will be paid in early December to over 1.1 million recipients, including all recipients of the one parent family payment and the jobseeker’s allowance transitional payment. Budget 2015 also introduced a new back-to-work family dividend.

One-parent family recipients who go back to work become eligible to receive the dividend. I explained that this means they will keep the payments with regard to children on a tapering basis for two years. In addition, the amounts we pay in family income supplement has increased significantly, particularly for one-parent families.

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