Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

Gabhaim buíochas leis an mbeirt Seanadóir as ucht an leasaithe seo. I do not propose to accept the amendments.

As I said during the Dáil debate, it is not appropriate to include commitments to produce reports in primary legislation, particularly legislation that is as complex as the Social Welfare Consolidation Act and this Bill.

With respect to the specific issues, as is clear from the Bill, the intention is for this to become operable on enactment, and it is important for those who have become eligible for the pension for the first time. As a result, it will be impossible to produce the report that is being sought by the Senator’s amendment No. 1 before the Act comes into operation. I know she does not want to delay payment, and I discussed this with Deputy O’Reilly during the Dáil debate. I absolutely understand that is not the intention. Some of the information being sought in amendment No. 1 is unavailable to my Department, or it is very likely not to be publicly available at all. My Department does not hold information on the degree of financial dependence that families with divorced or separated parents have on those parents.My Department has no basis to determine the financial arrangement that exists between divorced or separated parents, or the impact in the case of a death. It would be wrong for me to commit to something in legislation that cannot be produced. My main concern is that it would delay the payment of the pension.

On Senator Ruane's amendment and the specific case, the O'Meara case - I will come to the general point, which I am interested in - the function of the scheme before us and this pension is not to provide support in respect of the bereaved children where there is no partner who is entitled to the payment. It would not be possible for my Department to report on a group that will not come under the payment as their parents would not have been married, in a civil partnership or cohabiting. However, I made a commitment to Deputy O'Reilly in the Dáil that after a year of enactment, we will look at how it is working out. We will look at the impact it is having. It is not our intention to penalise people. The good thing about social welfare is that we have a very big Bill every year and if I think there are changes that needed to be made, I will bring forward changes in the Social Welfare Bill 2027.

On Senator Ruane's general point, we are discussing child poverty and youth targets at the moment. I will ask my own team to engage with the Senator on all of those issues in the context of those targets and of that debate because she has given me some food for thought in a way that has not happened to date. I will ask some of my team to engage with the Senator during August on that. On the specific amendments, I cannot accept them, predominantly because I do not have the ability to accept them, I do not have that information and I really do not want to delay the payment of this pension. However, on child poverty, I will engage with the Senator and we will engage with the social protection, rural and community development committee approximately a year after enactment to assess the impact and to ensure it has not had an overly negative impact.