John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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559. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the estimated full-year cost of increasing child benefit by €3, €5 and €10 for children aged 12 and over. [13853/17]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Child Benefit is a monthly payment made to families with children in respect of all qualified children up to the age of 16 years. The payment continues to be paid in respect of children up to their 18th birthday who are in full-time education, or who have a disability.

Child Benefit is currently paid to around 627,000 families in respect of some 1.2 million children, with an estimated expenditure in the order of over €2 billion in 2017.

The estimated annual costs of increasing Child Benefit by €3, €5 and €10 for children aged 12 and over is as follows:-

€3 increase: €13.4 million

€5 increase: €22.4 million

€10 increase: €44.8 million.

A targeted increase to children aged 12 years and over, while welcome to families with children in this category, would possibly create an expectation of a similar rate increase to families with younger children under 12 years.

Furthermore, from an operational perspective significant administrative resources would be required as in effect a two-tier system is being introduced, which is not possible to cost or estimate accurately at present.

Any changes to the eligibility criteria for Child Benefit have to be considered in an overall budgetary context.