Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Question 321: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the contribution her Department and the Revenue Commissioners have made to a report into the take up of family income supplement; her views on same; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43903/08]

Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Question 336: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the terms of reference for her Department's report into the take up of family income supplement; when same will be published; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43901/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 321 and 336 together.

Family income supplement is an income support scheme for people, in low-income employment, with children. It is designed to provide the incentive to remain in, or take up, employment rather than be fully welfare dependent.

The Department commissioned a research project to establish the reasons for the apparent lack of take-up of Family Income Supplement (FIS), to establish the level of public awareness of the scheme and to examine the level of non-take up of the scheme.

The terms of reference for 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; and to examine and 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.

This project was commissioned by the Department of Social and Family Affairs with no direct involvement by the Revenue Commissioners. However, income data provided by the Revenue Commissioners to the Department of Social and Family Affairs, as part of the normal course of events, was used to identify potential FIS recipients. The project is at the final stage at present and is expected to be completed shortly.