Bobby Aylward (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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261. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the estimated amount it would cost the State to exclude maintenance payments from means assessment for social welfare payments; if he has previously investigated the feasibility of same; if he will consider this action as part of future budgets; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21592/17]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Where a social welfare claimant is in receipt of maintenance payments from a spouse/partner, housing costs incurred by the social welfare claimant (e.g. rent or mortgage payments and/or home improvement loan) up to a maximum of €95.23 per week may be offset against the maintenance payment, with half the balance of the maintenance being assessed as means. These arrangements ensure that there is always an incentive to receive a maintenance payment. The cost of disregarding all maintenance received by a welfare claimant across all relevant schemes is not readily available.

Where a social welfare claimant is paying maintenance to another person, the means assessment of this maintenance paid varies by the type of social welfare scheme.

Social welfare legislation specifically provides that maintenance payments paid under a separation order by recipients of certain social welfare schemes are to be deducted from any assessment of their income. This provision applies to the state pension non-contributory, widow/er’s and surviving civil partner’s non-contributory pension, carer’s allowance, one-parent family payment, and the blind pension.

In the case of claimants of other schemes, however, such as jobseeker’s allowance, disability allowance and supplementary welfare allowance, their means for social welfare purposes are their means before they meet any obligations they may have to pay maintenance i.e. no account is taken of such payments in assessing the means of the maintenance payer.

It is not possible to provide the cost of excluding maintenance payments made by social welfare claimants, as the relevant data are not available. Any change to the current arrangements would have to be considered in the overall policy and budgetary context.