Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I do not propose to accept this amendment. Family income supplement, FIS, is a weekly tax-free support targeted at low-income workers who have children. FIS provides a crucial support for over 44,000 working families and almost 100,000 children. We are spending some €280 million this year, which is a very significant increase in this payment.

The purpose of the support is to provide an incentive to workers to take up or stay in employment rather than claiming a social welfare payment. While weekly social welfare payments are increased according to the family size, weekly income from employment obviously does not take into account the worker's family size. Therefore, FIS is a very important supplement to the worker's weekly earnings where they have children. It is a very strong incentive to stay in employment when compared with the social welfare payments that might be available for somebody who decided to stay on social welfare.

Section 9 redefines what constitutes a family for FIS purposes and affirms that FIS cannot be paid to a claimant who is maintaining a child where that child does not reside with the claimant, unless the claimant is also maintaining his or her separated spouse or civil partner with whom the child is residing. It further clarifies that, in such cases, FIS cannot be paid if the spouse or civil partner with whom the child is residing is in receipt of a weekly social welfare payment in his or her own right.

Under the provisions in section 9 of the Bill, the circumstances in which a child is to be regarded as normally being a member of a household for FIS entitlement purposes will be specified in regulations which will be made in accordance with the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005. This is not an issue where the parents or guardians and children live together, which is straightforward. However, where the parents or guardians live apart, regulations are required in order to set out the rules to be used to determine which parent or guardian the children will be regarded as normally residing with for FIS purposes.