Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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44. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection the qualifying criteria for the part-time job incentive scheme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43058/15]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The part-time job incentive scheme is a non-statutory scheme, which allows people who are long-term unemployed to take up part-time employment for less than 24 hours per week and receive a special weekly income supplement. Participants on the scheme are expected to continue to make efforts to find full-time work. There are currently 381 participants on the scheme with a budget of just under €2 million for 2015.

To qualify for the part-time job incentive scheme a person must be in receipt of jobseeker's allowance for at least 390 days. In addition, a person must have been in receipt of a higher jobseeker's payment rate than the appropriate part-time job incentive supplement payable. The part-time job incentive supplement rate is €119 per week for a single person and €193.90 per week where an individual was getting an increase for a qualified adult. There is no increase for qualified children.

I recently sought and received special sanction from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to extend the part time job incentive scheme to customers who have exited the one parent family payment due to the scheme reforms. This sanction is specifically for former one-parent family payment recipients whose youngest child is aged 14 or over, who are working more than 3 days out of 7 and, as such would not be entitled to jobseeker’s allowance. This particular extension to the scheme will be available to participants for one year giving them time to increase their hours to 19 per week and qualify for the family income supplement.

Although the part-time job incentive scheme is a small non statutory scheme, it can provide assistance to long term unemployed who can only find part-time work and who fail the ‘4 in 7’ jobseeker’s rule or do not qualify for FIS.

Any change to the qualifying criteria for the part-time job incentive scheme would have to be considered in a budgetary context.