Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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429. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the estimated cost of increasing the working family payment threshold by €10 for all family sizes; the reason she did not increase the threshold for larger families; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [31645/20]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Working Family Payment is an in-work support which provides an income top-up for employees on low earnings with children. It is designed to prevent in-work poverty for low paid workers with child dependents and to offer a financial incentive to take up and remain in employment.

Increasing the Working Family Payment income threshold for families with one, two or three children in recent budgets is a targeted measure benefiting low income families. Increasing income thresholds is a measure that is directly linked to household income and therefore directly supports low-income working families. As of June 2020 families with one, two or three children represented 86% of all Working Family Payment recipient households.

The full year cost of increasing the income threshold for families with one, two or three children, by €10 per week as announced in Budget 2021, is estimated at €21.4 million. If this measure were to be extended to all family sizes the additional estimated expenditure would be €2.6 million.

The Budget measure is, in particular, intended to target the most vulnerable families such as lone parent families - who are typically households with one or two children. Lone parents accounted for 49% of all Working Family Payment recipients in 2019. For the majority of these families the Working Family Payment is their primary source of income support from the Department.