Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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42. To ask the Minister for Social Protection his plans to reverse the changes made in 2015 to the one-parent family payment scheme which have considerably increased the financial burden on one-parent families; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18684/16]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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My Department will be spending an estimated €500 million on the one-parent family payment (OFP) scheme in 2016. The scheme currently supports over 41,000 recipients and almost 74,300 children.

The reforms to the one-parent family payment scheme were introduced to address long-term social welfare income support dependency. The reforms provide enhanced access to the Department’s Intreo service to lone parents once their youngest child turns 7 years of age. Access to the Department’s range of education and employment support services is essential to facilitate lone parents to progress into sustainable employment and financial independence.

Budget 2016 contained a number of measures to support lone parents, including working lone parents. For example a lone parent on the jobseeker’s transitional payment working 15 hours at the national minimum wage saw an increase in their overall income of just over €28 per week from approximately €306 in 2015 to €334 in 2016. This is as a result of the increase in the national minimum wage, the more generous means test on the jobseeker’s transitional payment and the increase in fuel allowance. They also received an extra €5 per month per child as a result of the increase in child benefit.

It is important to highlight that the social impact assessment of Budget 2016 showed that budgetary policy would increase average household incomes for working lone parents by 2%. Non-earning lone parents also fared above average, gaining 1.8%.

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. This highlights that the best way to tackle poverty among lone parents is to assist them into employment. Access to activation supports is therefore vital to achieve this objective and it is therefore imperative that my Department continues to engage with lone parents to assist them into employment.