Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I too welcome the publication of the report and commend everybody involved in the group. It is a really important piece of work. However, the cost of removing child maintenance payments from the means test will be €10 million, which is small money, considering the budget of the Department of Social Protection. It is so regrettable we needed this group and this report in the first place. It is fair enough to have a report looking at the possibility of establishing an agency, but it should never, ever have been the case that child maintenance, where it is paid, is treated as household income. We did not need a report or anything complex or convoluted to come to that conclusion. At €10 million, it should have been done a long time ago.

I am glad that the "efforts to seek maintenance" requirement is to be removed as it places the obligation on lone parents to seek maintenance through the courts. The Minister herself referred to the additional stress that that causes. If we do not set up an agency or some kind of service, that is stress continued because people will end up in court when they clearly do not want to be there.

A majority view of the group was that the child maintenance service or agency be established. Will the Minister give her opinion on that?

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