Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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99. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection his plans for a targeted child benefit payment. [50693/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The Programme for Government includes the commitment to explore a targeted child benefit payment and examine the interaction this would have with existing targeted supports like the Working Family and Child Support Payments.

Officials in my Department are working on this commitment. This work is complex and will take time to get right. We need to ensure that any potential second tier payment has the impact we want it to have and helps those families who need it most. The complexity of the issue is clear from the fact that the outline model used for costing and impact purposes by the ESRI involved a reduction in payment to about 100,000 children. We also need to consider the impacts any new second tier payment would have on work incentives and the labour market. While a second-tier payment is a complex piece of work and will take time to get right, the exploration of this proposal is underway. However, it will not be possible to complete this work in time for the Budget.

While a targeted child benefit payment is one approach to reduce child poverty, there are also existing schemes and mechanisms available to me to achieve this end. We know, based on ESRI research, that increases in the Child Support Payment and Working Family Payment are very effective at tackling child poverty. These payments provide targeted assistance that is directly linked to household income, thereby supporting low-income families with children. This is why payment rates of the Child Support Payment and weekly thresholds for the Working Family Payment were increased significantly in Budget 2025, amongst other measures.

The Government has approved an ambitious child poverty target, with a consistent poverty rate of 3% to be achieved by the end of 2030. This would mean a reduction of 5.5 percentage points from the current child consistent poverty rate of 8.5%.

While of course, no level of child poverty is acceptable, the new Child Poverty Target will guide our cross-government policies and ensure investment is targeted at the children who need it the most, so we can lift as many children as possible out of poverty.