Francis Noel Duffy (Dublin South West, Green Party)
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1150.To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality if she will consider the establishment of a child maintenance service agency similar to the Child Maintenance Service in the UK to process and mediate child maintenance-related matters and provide necessary supports to parents involved as opposed to going directly to the courts; and if she will make a statement on the matter.[35166/24]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The Child Maintenance Review Group was established in 2020 to consider and make recommendations in relation to the establishment of a State Child Maintenance Agency among other things. Its report was published in November 2022 and on foot of the report it was decided by Government that a State Child Maintenance Agency should not be established. It was agreed that the Department of Justice would undertake a review of the enforcement of child maintenance orders in the context of the wider reforms of family justice underway.

The Family Justice Strategy, published in November 2022, includes nine key goals and over 50 actions. The Review of the Enforcement of Child Maintenance Orders, which was published on 8 January 2024, is one of the actions contained in Goal One of the Strategy, that of ‘supporting children’.

The review was led by my Department and builds on the previous report of the Child Maintenance Review Group.

The Review notes that the vast majority of parents take their financial and other responsibilities towards their children very seriously. It notes that many parents make private child maintenance arrangements, and that this is the best option and the one to be promoted and encouraged.

However, it notes that there will always be circumstances in which private arrangements are not possible or in which private arrangements breakdown and in these circumstances Government and the courts are tasked with safeguarding the financial welfare of children.

The Review puts forward 26 recommendations focused on generating maximum compliance with child maintenance orders, to ensure security and stability for children and to aid poverty prevention. The recommendations, while mainly focused on strengthening provisions for court enforcement of child maintenance orders, also look at ways to encourage voluntary payment and to assist people to make private arrangements. They focus on improving the way in which maintenance is agreed/ordered, the way in which payment is encouraged, the means by which default can be avoided and greater mechanisms for enforcement.

The key recommendations of the review include:

Development of a set of child maintenance guidelines.

Introduction of mandatory mediation information sessions.

Strengthening attachment of earnings orders and exploring the possibility of attaching an order to a PPS number rather than employing entities, so that orders do not lapse when there is a change in employer.

Introduction of a single enforcement procedure when the receiving parent makes an enforcement application, allowing the judge to choose the most appropriate enforcement option based on the circumstances of the case.

Simplification of the bench warrant process.

Placing the onus on paying parents to pay costs associated with enforcement proceedings.

Allowing for deductions from social welfare, the paying parent’s bank accounts, from government grants and subsidies and allowing for the recovery of arrears from tax refunds.

Work has commenced on the development of a set of child maintenance guidelines and the development of a mandatory mediation information sessions pilot for child maintenance cases. It is hoped that these initiatives will encourage voluntary child maintenance agreements and increase compliance with those agreements.

With the cooperation of Minister Humphreys and Minister O’Gorman, I intend to move the other recommendations towards implementation without delay.

A key element of the Family Justice Strategy, the forthcoming Family Court Bill intends to create a new dedicated Family Court within the existing court structure and provide for court procedures that support a faster and less adversarial resolution of disputes in specialised centres.

The Bill is underpinned by a set of guiding principles to help ensure that the Family Court system will make the best interests of the child a primary consideration in all family law proceedings, operate in an efficient and user-friendly manner, and encourage active case management by the courts. These guiding principles encourage the use of alternative dispute resolution where appropriate, promote good case management practice, ensuring that proceedings are conducted as far as possible in a user-friendly manner, and minimising the cost of proceedings where feasible.

The Bill is progressing through the Houses of the Oireachtas and it is my aim that it will be enacted as soon as possible.