Child maintenance is just one of the myriad arrangements that must be put in place when children are being raised by separated parents. Any serious discussion needs to consider that most parents take their responsibilities in this regard very seriously. That said, it is inevitable that arrangements will break down or prove impossible to put in place and at that point the State has a role to play.
The Government has published proposals to ensure compliance in these circumstances. Minister for Justice Helen McEntee proposes that these include collection of maintenance payments by the Revenue Commissioners in a similar manner to which they collect the Local Property Tax or via An Post deductions from welfare payments.
Enforcement, however, comes at the end of a long road that requires a parent who has not received a maintenance payment to take court proceedings. They are then confronted by a system that is short of family law judges, family law courts and operates without the benefit of a comprehensive modern IT system. It is also generally accepted that the procedures of the court are not all they could be. Deficiencies have also been identified in terms of access to free Civil Legal Aid and also resources for the Civil Legal Aid service.
The burden imposed on parents by the court process was one of the reasons that a majority of the 2022 Child Maintenance Review Group recommended the establishment of a State Child Maintenance Body that would collect and transmit maintenance payments and when necessary, take enforcement action, similar to the UK.
The Government sided with the view of a minority of the review group (three out of the seven) that the court system should continue to deal with the child maintenance issues, subject to some reforms. Those reforms are to be addressed via the Family Courts Bill 2022, the Judicial Planning Working Group, the Courts Service Modernisation Programme and the Civil Legal Aid Review, according to the Government.
Plans for new sanctions only addresses one issue. A system which operates efficiently and fairly needs to be the priority.