Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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235. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the estimated cost of increasing jobseeker's transitional payment to when the one parent's youngest child turns 18 years of age; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [39048/18]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The cost of increasing the age limit for a qualified child for the jobseeker's transitional payment (JST) to when the youngest child turns 18 years of age is not easily estimated.

There are significant barriers to undertaking such an exercise.  For example, customers may no longer be within the welfare system, while others could seek to move from alternative payments such as Jobseekers Allowance (JA), the Working Family Payment (WFP) and the Back to Work Family Dividend (BTWFD) back to JST.  It would be difficult for my Department to estimate the magnitude of this flow into and between schemes with any degree of accuracy.

As these unknown factors are critical to providing a reliable costing my Department is not in a position to provide the costing requested.