Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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583. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the estimated full year cost of increasing the qualified child increase from €29.80 to €32.30; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [30965/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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Increases for a Qualified Child (IQCs) are paid as child-related supplements to most weekly social welfare payments in recognition of the need for greater incomes among benefit-dependent households with dependent children. The current full rate of payment is €29.80 per week per dependent child. The estimated expenditure on qualified child increase in 2017 is around €471 million. The Department currently pays IQCs in respect of 356,236 children.

IQC payments do not of themselves constitute a specific social welfare scheme and entitlement to the appropriate primary adult payment must be established in the first instance.

Where children continue in full-time education, payment of the IQC can continue up to 22 years of age or up to the end of the academic year in which the child reaches 22 in the case of long-term payments as well as short-term payments that have been in payment for at least 156 days.

The estimated full year cost of increasing the qualified child increase from €29.80 to €32.30 would cost an additional €43 million. Any changes to the rate of the IQC would have to be considered in an overall budgetary context.