Written answers

Tuesday, 8 July 2014

Department of Social Protection

One-Parent Family Payment Eligibility

Photo of Ciara ConwayCiara Conway (Waterford, Labour)
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429. To ask the Minister for Social Protection her plans to introduce an adequate number of free child care places, as previously promised, to counteract the difficulties being faced by parents who are losing the one-parent family payment; the timeline in place to provide the child care places; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [29914/14]

Photo of Ciara ConwayCiara Conway (Waterford, Labour)
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430. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will provide a list in tabular form of the numbers of persons who will move from the one-parent family payment to jobseeker's allowance over the next 12 months; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [29915/14]

Photo of Ciara ConwayCiara Conway (Waterford, Labour)
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431. To ask the Minister for Social Protection her plans to introduce other supports for working parents who will lose the one-parent family payment; if she will reconsider the income disregards; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [29916/14]

Photo of Joan BurtonJoan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 429 to 431, inclusive, together.

The one-parent family payment (OFP) scheme has played an important role in providing income support to lone parents since its introduction in 1997. The number of OFP recipients stood at 74,426 in May, 2014, and an estimated €863 million is expected to be spent on the scheme during 2013.

The Social Welfare and Pensions Act, 2012, contains provisions to reduce, on a phased basis, the income disregard of the OFP scheme. The income disregard was reduced from €110 per week to its current limit of €90 per week in January, 2014. It will be further reduced from €90 per week to €75 per week in January 2015 and to €60 per week in January 2016. There are no plans to reverse these reductions and any change to these arrangements would require substitute savings and would have to be considered in a budgetary context.

The Social Welfare and Pensions Act, 2012, also contains provisions to reduce, on a phased basis, the maximum age limit of the youngest child at which an OFP recipient’s payment ceases to 7 years from 2014 for new entrants and from 2015 for existing recipients.

On 3 July, 2014, approximately 5,140 customers saw their entitlement to the OFP payment cease as a result of their youngest child reaching the maximum age threshold of the OFP scheme.

Approximately 3,600 of the affected OFP customers are expected to have applied for the jobseeker’s allowance (JA) payment. Of these customers, approximately 70% are not working and, as such, will not suffer any reduction in their new income support payment as the JA payment pays the same personal and qualified child rates as the OFP payment. Any of these customers with a child under 14 years of age will be subject to the JA transitional arrangement, which exempts these individuals from having to be genuinely seeking and available for full time employment. This exemption is in recognition of lone parents caring responsibilities and will reduce their requirement for childcare.

Approximately 850 of the affected OFP customers were also claiming the family income supplement (FIS) by virtue of being in employment for 19 or more hours per week. These customers have had their FIS payment automatically adjusted to compensate for some 60% of the loss of their OFP payment.

It is expected that from now until the end of June 2015 a further 4,000 OFP recipients will lose entitlement to the OFP payment as a result of the reductions in the OFP age threshold which came into effect on 3 July. Monthly figures for the approximate number of these customers, who are expected to transition from the OFP payment to the JA payment over the coming twelve months, are unavailable as the exact number of individuals moving to the JA scheme will depend on their individual circumstances and the number of individuals who may be eligible to apply for the FIS payment.

Childcare policy, and the delivery of childcare services, is the responsibility of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs (D/CYA). However, as part of a package of measures in Budget 2013, I, along with then Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Frances Fitzgerald, announced an after-school child care (ASCC) initiative between our two Departments. The purpose of the ASCC scheme, which was rolled out nationally in 2013, is to help to offset some of the after-school child care costs that are associated with availing of an employment opportunity in a bid to encourage more individuals to take up employment. The scheme provides 800 subsidised after-school childcare places and is open to both jobseekers and OFP recipients.

In Budget 2014, the re-focusing of some of the original ASCC scheme budget enabled Minister Fitzgerald and I to introduce the community employment (CE) childcare programme. This scheme was implemented in January, 2014, and provides some 1,800 subsidised childcare places to CE participants.

These two schemes build on the existing supports provided for, and implemented by, the D/CYA in the childcare sector, through which childcare is provided to approximately 35,000 children of low-income parents at reduced rates.

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