Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As regards liable relatives in the context of receipt of the jobseeker's transition payment, it does not apply to lone parents in receipt of the payment because the legislation was never changed when the age of the youngest child to qualify for the lone-parent family payment was reduced to seven years. Does the Minister have plans to amend the legislation to provide for this? It makes no sense that the maintenance recovery division can operate up to a child's seventh birthday and that once the child reaches the age of seven years, the parent is more or less on his or her own. At the same time, the ex-partner will have received a letter from the Department stating he or she is no longer liable to pay maintenance. By any standard, that is undesirable. I argue having a national maintenance agency is very relevant in the context of the Department of Social Protection. We are talking about a mechanism to compel people to discharge their responsibilities, which responsibilities have resulted in the Department paying out money. We are asking the people in question to make a contribution.

If there is an effective national agency recovering money from those people, the Department will have more money to redirect to other areas, such as that relating to disabilities.

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