Michael Brennan (Progressive Democrats)

This is an area that needs considerable attention and reform. The document on lone parenthood which we recently published deals with this issue because I wanted to make sure that the maintenance issue was included. The applicants for a one-parent family payment are required to make ongoing efforts to seek adequate maintenance from their former spouses or, in the case of unmarried applicants, the other parent of the child. They have to satisfy the Department that they have made reasonable attempts to obtain such maintenance.

This issue of maintenance payments is first and foremost a private matter and the manner of many such payments are resolved through the courts. However, the purpose of the Department's maintenance recovery operation — we have a unit in this area — is to recover some or all of the moneys being expended on social welfare payments for lone parents. In every case where a one-parent family payment is awarded the maintenance recovery unit seeks to trace the other parent, referred to as the "liable relative" in order to ascertain whether he or she is in a financial position to contribute towards the cost of one-parent family payment. The follow-up activity takes place within two or three weeks. All liable relatives are then assessed with maintenance liabilities. They are notified by the Department and then issued with determination orders. The amount assessed can be reviewed when new information comes to light.

The number of one-parent family payment recipients being paid by the Department at the end of last year was 83,000. Included in that figure is approximately 900 payments to widowed persons where maintenance is not an issue. In the period January 2003 to December 2005, the maintenance recovery unit examined 56,000 cases and issued determination orders to 8,017 liable relatives. At the end of January 2006, the latest date for which figures are available, 2,193 liable relatives were contributing directly to the Department. The Department's records indicate that approximately 9,600 one-parent family payment recipients are in receipt of maintenance from their spouse or other parent of their child and, as a result, receive a reduced rate of one-parent family payments.

There are a large number of issues involved. Senator Terry requested some figures. She wanted to know how many fathers were contributing to the maintenance of their children. The best figure I can give her is 15% and I will give a brief outline of the background. Last year we examined 16,000 cases and in 12% of them we found no trace of the father. In 17% of cases we found that the father was on social welfare. In another 17% of cases the liable relative was either unknown or there was violence in the household or other unusual circumstances. We determined that no contribution was due from 39% of those who had jobs because of their being on low income and other circumstances. That figure seems to be very high but I am sure there is a good reason for it. Determination orders were made in 15% of cases. In other words, 15% of all the samples examined — I have no reason to believe that it is not the same across the board — are required to make payments.

We must do far better than that. These moneys generally are not paid directly to the spouse but to the Department in order that we can reduce the one-parent family payment. This is an issue I have discussed with my officials. We are asking a young father to pay money to a Department of State when he should be paying it directly to the mother. I wonder if it is possible to make that link and whether the latter is the direction in which we should be moving. That would be difficult because currently the policy is that payment from the father is a way of reducing the State's liability to pay the one-parent family allowance. The money comes to the Department and that may be a reason the figure is very low. I am only speculating about that and not certain about it. However, we can do more here.

There is another side to this matter that I wish to briefly mention. It is that fathers' rights groups cannot be forgotten. These groups claim fathers have difficulty in gaining access to their children. We must also consider grandparents who often lose contact with their grandchildren. It is not good social policy to have a situation where in a large number of cases, fathers and grandparents do not have access to a child. We have to get a system here where every father who can pay something must do so.

In the UK all fathers are required to pay a minimum of £10 a week, regardless of their circumstances. I have not thought about this matter any further at this point. The Child Support Agency in the UK got into difficulty due to computer and other problems and I would not want to follow that route. I am not interested in the finances of this issue so much as the social policy aspect. If a couple are not together, we should try to make sure that maintenance is available in such a way that strengthens, rather than weakens, the link between the father and the child. Our current system is not good enough in terms of strengthening the social contact link between the child and the father. We need to do more in that area. We could discuss this perhaps when we come to deal with the report on lone parents.