James Bannon (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

314. To ask the Minister for Social Protection her plans to reform family income supplement to ensure that more low income self-employed families can qualify; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [25382/14]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The family income supplement (FIS) is an in-work support which provides an income top-up for employees on low earnings with children. FIS is designed to prevent child and family poverty and to offer a financial incentive to take-up employment as compared to social welfare payments. There are currently some 44,000 families with some 99,000 children in receipt of FIS. Expenditure on FIS is estimated to be of the order of €280 million in 2014.

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. Therefore, self-employed people are not eligible for FIS.

There are a number of factors that would have to be taken in to account in any consideration of extending eligibility for FIS to include self-employed persons:

- the practical difficulties in defining and controlling an alternative to the hours worked condition;

- establishing satisfactorily a self-employed person's hours of employment and certifying this on an ongoing basis;

- existing arrangements to provide income support to self-employed people on low incomes, such as jobseeker's allowance and farm assist for low-income farmers;

- the cost of extending the scheme to the self-employed would be considerable and could only be considered in a budgetary context.

Given the above, I have no immediate plans to extend FIS to the self-employed.