Mary Upton (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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Question 541: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs if income from FÁS training schemes counts as income when assessing family income supplement entitlements; if it is counted as income, when this rule was introduced; if it was ever the case that income from a FÁS training scheme was exempt as income for FIS purposes; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [27003/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Family income supplement (FIS) is designed to provide cash support for employees on low earnings with families. This preserves the incentive to remain in employment in circumstances where the employee might only be marginally better off than if he or she were unemployed and claiming other social welfare payments. FIS is paid on a weekly basis over a period of 52 weeks, taking into account a family's net earnings and the number of children under aged 18 or aged between 18 and 22 years and in full time education.

The FIS scheme is provided for in the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 (as amended) and in the Social Welfare (Consolidated Claims, Payments and Control Regulations 2007) (as amended).

Within this legislation and these regulations provision is made for the calculation of weekly family income with the disregard of certain items.

Weekly family income from FÁS training schemes is not included in the items that are disregarded as income and therefore counts as income. This has always been the position as regards the assessment of income from FÁS training schemes for FIS purposes.

Any changes in the income disregards to include a disregard of income from FÁS Training schemes for FIS purposes would have to be considered in a budgetary context.