Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein)
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588. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection her plans for those who are self employed regarding family income supplement; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [43956/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The Working Family Payment (WFP), formerly known as Family Income Supplement, or FIS, is an in-work support which provides an income top-up for employees on low earnings. The WFP is designed to prevent in-work poverty for low paid workers with child dependants, and to offer a financial incentive to take-up employment. There are currently over 57,000 families with more than 127,000 children in receipt of the WFP. The estimated spend on the WFP this year is approximately €422 million.

To qualify for payment of the WFP, a person must be engaged in insurable employment which is expected to last for at least three months and be working for a minimum of 38 hours per fortnight or 19 hours per week. Therefore, self-employed people are not eligible for the WFP.

The rationale for not extending eligibility for the WFP to include self-employed persons includes:-

- the practical difficulties in defining and controlling an alternative to the hours worked condition;

- the difficulty in establishing satisfactorily a self-employed person’s hours of employment and certifying this on an ongoing basis;

- existing arrangements to provide income support to self-employed people on low incomes, such as jobseeker’s allowance and farm assist for low-income farmers;

- the cost of extending the scheme to the self-employed, which would be considerable.

Any extension of the WFP to other categories of persons, such as the self-employed, would have to be considered in a budgetary context. There are no plans for such an extension in present circumstances.

However, I would bring the Deputy’s attention to the Back to Work Family Dividend, which helps families to move from social welfare into employment, including self-employment, by retaining their qualified child increase for up to two years. There are currently 8,156 families in receipt of the dividend, of whom 124 are in self-employment.