Bernard Allen (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 70: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs if he has received the special report from his officials regarding the issue of maintenance referred to in the Joint Committee on Social and Family Affairs debate on the lone parent proposals on 30 June 2006; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23076/06]

Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)
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Applicants for one-parent family payment are required to make efforts to seek adequate maintenance from their former spouses, or, in the case of unmarried applicants, the other parent of their child, and must satisfy the Department that they have made reasonable attempts to obtain such maintenance. Similarly, under the Liability to Maintain the Family provisions of the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act 2005, absent parents have a responsibility to support their children and this is pursued by the Department where the absent parent is not making sufficient effort to provide adequate support.

The report referred to by the Deputy which is in essence a preliminary report, is now to hand. This report provides an indicative estimate of the number of liable relatives contributing to the support of their children and recommends the undertaking of a special project by the Maintenance Recovery Unit of my Department in this area in an attempt to better estimate the numbers of liable relatives contributing.

Over the next three months the Maintenance Recovery Unit will examine the circumstances of the liable relatives of all newly awarded one-parent family payment claims and assess the level of contribution, through maintenance payments or other supports, being made in respect of the children. On completion, a report will be compiled outlining the findings and including proposals in relation to how best the Department might interact with the full liable relative population going forward.

At present 2,290 liable relatives are making payments directly to my Department's Maintenance Recovery Unit (MRU) on foot of maintenance determination orders issued by the Unit. There are also 17,798 lone parent customers receiving reduced rate payments and it is estimated that the receipt of maintenance payments is a factor in approximately 9,700 of these cases, based on an analysis of the casework undertaken in the MRU over the past 5 years. In addition, there is a substantial number of cases where absent parents are or have been making some contribution to lone parents either by direct cash contributions or indirectly in the form of meeting the educational or other costs of children, which does not result in a reduction in payment for the lone parent. The project currently underway aims to better quantify the number of such cases and the financial circumstances of the absent parents involved.