Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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336. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the number of recipients of family income support by county in each of the years 2011 to 2017 in tabular form. [5245/18]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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Working Family Payment (WFP) Section was unable to provide the data requested for year 2011. WFP Section informed the Deputy’s constituency office in advance of answering this Parliamentary Question (PQ) and it was confirmed the Deputy accepted the revised data figures.

Working Family Payment (WFP) formerly known as Family Income Supplement (FIS) is a weekly tax-free payment for employees on low earnings with children. This payment effectively preserves the incentive to take up or remain in employment in circumstances where the employee might only be marginally better off than if s/he were claiming other social welfare payments. WFP provides an important policy instrument in reducing child poverty in working households as well as improving incentives to work. There has been a steady growth both in the number of families supported by WFP over recent years and associated expenditure with numbers in receipt of WFP rising from 26,000 families with 56,000 children in 2009 to 57,745 families and 129,274 children by the end of 2017.

Increased awareness of WFP as a consequence of the Department’s information strategy for the scheme and significant improvements in customer service and processing times for WFP customers have contributed to the increased numbers.

The number of FIS recipients by county from 2012 - 2017 is as follows:

FIS Recipients

I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.