Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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1622. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the full-year cost of reversing changes made to the one-parent family payment in 2012, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [1228/18]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The full year cost of reversing changes made to the One-Parent Family Payment (OFP) in 2012 would be very difficult to estimate with any accuracy.

There are three significant barriers to undertaking such an exercise. Firstly, a reversal of the amendments made to the OFP scheme could result in a cohort of lone parents that are currently not in receipt of a social welfare payment becoming eligible and therefore moving onto a social welfare payment. As members of this cohort are not currently in receipt of a social welfare payment it would be difficult to for the Department to estimate the numbers involved.

Secondly, some customers could seek to move from alternative payments such as Jobseekers Allowance (JA), the Jobseeker’s Transitional Payment (JST) and the Back to Work Family Dividend (BTWFD) back to the OFP. Again, it would be difficult for the Department to estimate the magnitude of this flow between schemes with any degree of accuracy.

Finally, reversing the changes to the OFP would also increase the incidence of dual payments of OFP and the Working Family Payment (WFP) (formerly FIS). It would not be possible to estimate the degree to which Working Family Payments might reduce, without having detailed knowledge of individuals’ working patterns and the degree to which these might change.

These unknown factors are critical to providing a reliable costing. The Department is therefore not in a position to provide the costing requested.