Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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80. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will cancel the latest change to the one parent family payment and freeze any further reductions of the scheme in view of the Government's failure to deliver the promised child care. [30869/14]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The one-parent family payment (OFP) scheme supports 74,426 recipients at an estimated cost of €863 million in 2014.The reforms to the OFP scheme are reducing on a phased basis, the maximum age limit of the youngest child at which an OFP recipient’s payment ceases to 7 years from 3 July 2014 for new entrants and from 2015 for existing recipients. There are no plans to cancel or freeze these arrangements as this would require substitute savings and would have to be considered in a budgetary context. The majority of lone parents who lose their OFP payment are expected to apply for the jobseeker’s allowance (JA) payment. Should any of these customers have a child under 14 years of age, they will be entitled to the JA transitional arrangement, which exempts them from having to be genuinely seeking, and available for, full-time employment. This exemption recognises the caring responsibilities of lone parents and will reduce their requirement for childcare.

Childcare is the responsibility of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs (D/CYA). However, in Budget 2013, the then Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and I announced an after-school child care (ASCC) initiative. The purpose of this scheme is to offset some of the after-school childcare 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 the original ASCC budget enabled Minister Fitzgerald and I to introduce the community employment (CE) childcare programme. This scheme was implemented in January and provides some 1,800 subsidised child care places to CE participants. These two schemes build on the existing supports provided by the D/CYA, through which subsidised childcare is provided to approximately 35,000 children of low-income parents.