Tom Sheahan (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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Question 164: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the position regarding the research project, commissioned by her Department to examine the factors behind the level of take up on the family income supplement, due to be completed in July 2008; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [39462/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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The Department has consistently publicised the Family Income Supplement (FIS) scheme in order to maximise uptake by qualified families. Significant improvements in the qualifying income limits and ongoing awareness campaigns have resulted in a strong upward trend in the level of new claims.

There are currently over 26,000 families in receipt of FIS. In 2007 the Department received 36,900 new FIS claims compared to 33,000 in 2006 and 23,000 in 2005 — an increase of over 60% on 2005 and 11% on 2006. In the first ten months of 2008, over 37,000 claims were received compared to some 33,900 in the same period in 2007 — an increase of over 9%.

The reasons for a perceived lack of take-up of FIS have been the subject of significant Parliamentary and interest group enquiry. To address the issue the Department commissioned a specific research project to establish the reasons behind the level of take up for the scheme.

The main objectives of the project are: to measure current levels of awareness of the Family Income Supplement, to measure perceived eligibility to apply among respondents, to establish whether they had applied in the past and to identify any perceived barriers to applying for the scheme, to gain an understanding of how the Department can effectively maximise uptake of FIS, to investigate awareness and effectiveness of the Department's advertising for the FIS, with particular emphasis on the campaign initiated in March 2006, to review the effectiveness of communications about FIS from the Department itself and through different information channels available to customers, to examine and attempt to reconcile the findings from the ESRI in 2005 which suggested that there was a large group of potentially eligible claimants of FIS who were failing to do so. The project is at the final stage at present and is expected to complete shortly.