Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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15. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection if she will review the impact that cuts to the one-parent family payment have had on recipients and their families. [1205/16]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The Department monitors all of the social welfare schemes that it administers, including the one-parent family payment scheme, on an on-going basis.

The Department has published a social impact assessment of the main social welfare and tax measures of Budget 2016. The assessment found that employed lone parents experienced an increase of 2% in their household income while unemployed lone parents experienced an increase of 1.8%. The cumulative impact of Budgets 2015 and 2016 also shows that budgetary policy would increase average household incomes for working lone parents by 2.8%. Non-earning lone parents also experience above average gains of 2.4% per cent.

Research shows that being at work reduces the at-risk-of-poverty rate for lone parents by three-quarters - compared to those who do not work, highlighting that the best way to tackle poverty among lone parents is to assist them into employment.

The one-parent family payment scheme reforms were introduced to address long-term social welfare dependency and poverty levels among lone parents and, also, to provide them with enhanced access to the Department’s range of education, training, and employment supports to facilitate their progression into sustainable employment.

The positive outcome of the reforms can be seen from the increase in the number of lone parents becoming new family income supplement recipients. Of the lone parents affected by the reforms in July 2015, more than 3,000 became new family income supplement recipients by the end of 2015. This indicates that these customers entered or increased their employment.