Planned cuts to welfare payments for lone parents who take up work, due to take effect in January, will not now go ahead. The policy reversal will benefit 28,000 of the poorest households with children and will be warmly welcomed by groups advocating for one-parent family households and for children in poverty. Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton will announce the change of plan this morning.
Currently, anyone receiving the one-parent family payment who takes up employment can earn up to €90 a week and keep their full welfare entitlement.
From January, as part of changes in Budget 2015, it was intended that this “income disregard” would fall from €90 a week to €75. It was further intended that the income disregard would fall to €60 a week in 2016. This will not now happen and the income disregard will remain at €90, Ms Burton will tell the Dáil today. It is due to begin debating the second stage of the Social Welfare Bill.
According to a spokesman for the Minister, if the change had gone ahead, the family of a lone parent earning €200 a week would have been €7.50 a week worse off.
Groups such as One Family have been engaged in intense advocacy against the planned reduction in the income disregard, arguing it would act to further entrap the poorest families in poverty.
Its policy director Stuart Duffin has welcomed the development as a "first step" towards addressing the barriers faced by lone parents seeking to access the workplace in a way that made economic sense. "This is a modest investment in poor working parents, helping to make work pay and helping to reduce child poverty," he said.
The policy reversal will cost the department €8 million next year, which will be funded from within the department’s existing allocation for 2015.
