As many as 20,000 working families could be missing out on welfare top-up supports of up to €400 per week.
According to the Minister for Social Affairs, Séamus Brennan, a lot of people had not claimed their Family Income Supplement (FIS) for working families on low incomes.
Mr Brennan was speaking today at the announcement of a nationwide awareness campaign to promote and encourage a greatly increased take up of the FIS scheme.
FIS provides direct cash supports for workers on low incomes with families and the new increased income limits announced in Budget 2006 means that more families now qualify.
The Minister called on families who may be entitled to the FIS support to use the present campaign to seek more information and to check out their entitlements
Over 17,000 families, with almost 34,000 children, benefit directly from the weekly top-up payments but thousands of other families who, based on research, would be likely to qualify for FIS, are not applying for the entitlement.
Families can get top-up supports of between €20 and €400 a week, depending on their income and the size of their family.
