Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 122: To ask the Minister for Social Protection his plans to extend family income supplement to persons who are self-employed whose business is not generating sufficient income to support their family; the type of accounts that would be required of a self-employed person to establish the income flow coming into their business; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [45676/10]

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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The Family Income Supplement (FIS) payment provides income support for employees on low earnings with children. The payment is designed to preserve the financial incentive to take-up or remain in employment in circumstances where the employee might be marginally better off in employment than on social welfare payments. To qualify for payment of FIS, a person must be engaged in insurable employment which is expected to last for at least three months and be working for a minimum of 38 hours per fortnight or 19 hours per week.

The reasons for not extending the scheme to include the self-employed are twofold. Firstly, it would be impossible to establish satisfactorily their eligibility as their hours of employment would be difficult to establish and certify on an ongoing basis. Secondly, there are arrangements already in place to provide income support to self-employed people on low incomes, such as through Jobseeker's Allowance and through Farm Assist for low-income farmers.

There would be considerable practical difficulties in defining and controlling an alternative to the hours worked condition. An extension of the FIS scheme would in effect fundamentally change the nature of the scheme and raise the risk of self-employed workers reducing the number of hours that they worked and/or under declaring their income to qualify for payment. Furthermore, the cost of extending the scheme to the self-employed would be considerable. For these reasons, it would not be feasible or desirable to extend FIS to the self-employed in its current form. There are no plans for extending FIS to the self employed at the present time.