Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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68. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if he will commission a report on the impact of the recent changes in social protection payments on lone parent families; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36056/16]

John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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72. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if he will review the changes made to the one-parent family payment and the effects it is having on lone parents in view of a report recently published (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36058/16]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 68 and 72 together.

As the deputies are aware, I discussed the reforms to the one parent family payment with the Joint Oireachtas Committee during the Committee stage of the Social Welfare Bill 2016 last week.

We are still at an early stage of the implementation of the reforms to the one parent family payment and I think it will take several years before the full impact of the reforms can be assessed. This is because lone parents, on foot of the reforms, are taking up education, training or employment support programmes, which will take time for them to complete.

However, I listened carefully to the issues raised the members of the Committee as part of that debate last week. I agreed that I would commission a report on the changes to the one parent family payment. The report shall examine the financial and social effects of the changes taking into account poverty rates and welfare dependency of those impacted by the reforms.

My Department values quality social policy research and the contribution it makes in assisting it in terms of informing policy across its broad remit.

As the Deputy will be aware from the title of the report, the report does not claim to be an analysis of the lone parent reforms. It was my Department’s expectation that the report would provide detail on the design of specific activation programmes that work for lone parents that could assist in developing further activation measures for these customers. The fact that it doesn’t include that information is a lost opportunity.

The research commenced in January 2015 and therefore takes no account of the final phase of the one-parent family payment reforms in July 2015, or improvements targeted at lone parents in the previous two Budgets, which resulted in lone parents benefitting more favourably than the average household.

In addition, I listened carefully to the views of One Family, and other groups, in the months before the Budget and consequently, I announced a package of measures supporting lone parents in the social welfare Budget 2017 package.

All lone parents on the one-parent family payment, the jobseeker’s transitional payment and jobseeker’s allowance will benefit from the €5 increase in the weekly rates of payment from March. A new €500 annual Cost of Education Allowance will be made available to Back to Education Allowance participants with children from the next academic year in September. In addition, the income disregards for the one-parent family payment and the jobseeker’s transitional payment will rise by €20 from January, from €90 to €110 per week, reversing in part previous reductions, to encourage one parent families to stay in, and return to, work.