Áine Collins (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for her comprehensive answer. As I said, I welcome these changes which are important for parents, particularly women. I also appreciate that the family income supplement scheme is available.

There seems to be an issue where people have been working all along for 19 hours a week. The difference between their existing entitlements and what the new entitlements allow them is a net effect of €80 per week. That is a lot of money to any home, but particularly where there is only one income and one parent. It is having a detrimental effect on those cases.

We want to make work pay and to ensure that people continue to work, increase their skills and maybe in a few years become able to go into full-time work. What we have done for this cohort of people is drive them out of work because they would be better off on full unemployment benefit than what they are on now with this new scheme. There seems to be a loophole or gap in what we have designed, which I am sure was not the intention. Now that we are made aware of it, I ask the Minister to re-evaluate it.

I can provide some real-life examples to the Minister that will demonstrate that the family income supplement does not cover it. It does not fall under this dividend scheme to which the Minister of State referred. With all due respect to the supplementary welfare officer, nobody wants to be going in every week saying they cannot live. They just want to continue with their commitments where they may have a mortgage, a repair loan or even a car loan. I am concerned that the result of this may be the thing we wanted to prevent in the first place.

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