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

I propose to take Questions Nos. 23 and 24 together.

The family income supplement (FIS) is designed to provide support for employees, with families, who have low earnings.

FIS recipients at end September 2014:

Number in receipt Sept 2014	Number of Children being claimed for Sept 2014	Number of Public Servants end Sept 2014	% of FIS recipients who are Public Servants	% of working households in receipt of FIS
48,493	107,695	3,816	7.9%	8%

There has been a steady growth both in the number of families supported by FIS over recent years and associated expenditure with numbers in receipt of FIS rising from 26,000 families in 2009 to some 48,000 by the end of September 2014. Expenditure on the FIS scheme is estimated to be €281.7 million in 2014, an increase of €20 million over 2013 figures.

A Department of Social Protection estimate, based on the Quarterly National Household Survey conducted by the Central Statistics Office, gave the number of households with children present and at least one adult working as 585,000for quarter 2, 2014.

At end the end of quarter 2 there were 46,267people in receipt of FIS. This gives the percentage of working households in receipt of FIS as almost 8%.

At the end of September 2014 there were 48,493people in receipt of FIS of which 3,816 were public servants. The number of children for which FIS is being claimed for is 107,695at the end of September 2014.

It should be noted that the number of civil servants who are receiving FIS is included in the figure for public servants. A separate breakdown for civil servants is not currently available, due to the way that data is captured on the department's computer data base for FIS applicants.