Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour)
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307. To ask the Minister for Finance if he will consider a tax credit to reduce the cost of child care as part of Budget 2016; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29049/15]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy may be aware that the Department of Children and Youth Affairs are currently chairing an Inter-Departmental working group to assess future policy options for increasing the quality, accessibility and affordability of early years and school age care and education services. This group was established in February 2015 and is due to submit a report to Government shortly.

In relation to schemes under my remit, I have no plans to introduce a tax relief for child care as it could be seen to unfairly discriminate against those individuals who stay at home and look after their children. While wanting to encourage participation in the workforce, equally we cannot say to individuals who stay at home to mind children that they are making a less valuable contribution to society.

In addition, tax relief is only of benefit to those in the tax net and it is estimated that in 2014, 39% of income earners were exempt from income tax. It could also be argued that any tax relief would most likely be absorbed by child-care providers in the form of higher prices.

Having said this, I would like to assure the Deputy that the Government acknowledges the continuing cost pressures on parents, particularly those with young children. In recognition of these cost pressures, a number of support measures are in place to ease the burden on working parents. These include the Community Childcare Subvention (CCS) programme, which funds community child-care services to enable them to charge reduced child-care fees to qualifying parents, the Childcare Education and Training Support (CETS) programme which provides free child-care places to qualifying Solas and VEC trainees and the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme which provides for a free preschool year for children in the year before commencing primary school. Generous entitlements to paid and unpaid maternity leave as well as child benefit payments are also provided.

The Department of Social Protection provides financial support to families on low pay by way of the Family Income Supplement (FIS) and additionally to one-parent families through the one-parent family payment.

Furthermore, a Single Person Child Carer tax credit of €1,650 is available, as well as an additional standard rate band of €4,000. This credit and band is payable to any single person with a child under 18 years of age or over 18 years of age if in full time education or permanently incapacitated. The primary claimant may relinquish this credit andthe increase in the rate band to a secondary claimant with whom the child resides for not less than 100 days in the year. To claim the Single Person Child Carer Credit a claimant must not be married, in a civil partnership or cohabiting.

As the Deputy will appreciate, I receive numerous requests for the introduction of new tax reliefs and the extension of existing ones. In considering these, I must be mindful of the public finances and the many demands on the Exchequer given the current budgetary constraints. Tax reliefs, no matter how worthwhile in themselves, reduce the tax base and make general reform of the tax system that much more difficult.