Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We cannot take any of these things in isolation. We need to take things in their totality. There is a lump sum and there are increases. All of those taken together will clearly protect the most vulnerable households from inflationary pressures over the coming year. We have to take the whole lot together.

Deputy Kerrane also raised the issue of child maintenance reviews. We want to make progress on this because most of the people who are affected by child maintenance, or the lack thereof, are women. We know that. I genuinely want to move this on. There have been a lot of things in the past couple of months, such as pensions, budgets, auto-enrolment and the cost of living. It is now my priority to deal with this issue. I want to get it right. We have examined models in other countries. While on the surface something might appear to be the right solution, when one starts to dig in a bit there are things that might not work well here. Ultimately, when a maintenance order has been made, if one parent is supposed to pay the other for the upkeep of the child, we want to make sure that the money gets to that parent every week.

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