A SYSTEM that encourages social welfare fraud by cohabiting parents needs to be overhauled, a joint Oireachtas committee was told yesterday in reference to the social welfare payment for one-parent families.
Treoir, a support organisation for unmarried single parents, was responding to a report commissioned by the Social and Family Affairs Committee on financial disincentives to cohabitation and marriage.
The committee’s report showed that a cohabiting couple on a single income were more disadvantaged than a single parent, said Margot Doherty, assistant chief executive of Treoir.
Treoir received many calls from cohabiting parents with incomes above minimum wage who were hugely disadvantaged by the income system, she said.
She recommended to the committee that people cohabiting with children and married parents should be treated the same in the tax system.
A parental allowance should be introduced for low-income families instead of a one-parent family payment, Ms Doherty said. It would ensure consistency across means-tested social welfare schemes, she said.
Any system that encourages fraud by cohabiting parents needs to be addressed, Treoir chief executive Margaret Dromey said, referring to couples who are cohabiting but claiming the payment.
Labour TD Róisín Shortall said the welfare system “encourages fraud” while Fine Gael TD Olwyn Enright said some parents had “no choice”.
