February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Andrew Bushe
DUBLIN — With new claims for lone-parent allowances now being submitted at the rate of 350 a week, a range of measures are being considered to try to force so-called deadbeat dads to support their partners and children.
Despite a bill of almost £400 million a year — with over 75,000 getting the lone-parent allowance and the number soaring by 18,000 new claims a year — there are only 550 people providing maintenance payments.
"It is a low figure," a Social and Family Affairs Department spokeswoman said last week.
Minister Dermot Ahern is considering a range of measures and is reviewing the operation of his department’s Sligo-based Maintenance Recovery Unit, which operates the Liable Relatives Provisions.
The department can request a payment of up to £60 a week from an unmarried father to help support his partner and maintain his child.
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"It is a high priority for us to go after these people and chase them up. We are looking at ways of getting results," the spokeswoman said.
Changing social attitudes, with more marriage breakdowns and the number of babies born to single mothers reaching 32 percent of all births last year, compared to just one in 20 in 1980, has sent lone-parent payments rocketing.
Husbands and partners are walking away from their responsibilities, leaving it to the taxpayer to pick up the bill.
Last year, there were 3,100 teenage births involving single mothers, with 66 aged under 16, according to the Central Statistics Office. The total of 17,200 births to single mothers last year is up from the 1999 figure of 16,500.
A departmental report says the enforcement unit has only seven staff. It has to decide on the payment that should be made, pursue defaulters and monitor and review those making payments.
In Britain, the Child Support Agency employs about 5,000 and failure to cooperate is a criminal offense. A proportionate comparison shows Ireland needs to increases the present staff from seven to about 250.
Finding and persuading reluctant runaway partners to pay is slow, low-return work, according to the report, and brings in much less money than investigation of other abuses or frauds.
A 10-year study by the department of more than 28,000 cases of spouses who had separated and weren’t paying anything found 23 percent could not be traced, 43 percent were themselves on social welfare and 34 percent had jobs.
A pilot study of 1,700 unmarried partners who should have been paying up, found only 2 percent were actually handing over any cash despite the fact that 69 percent had jobs.
Of the others, 13 percent could not be traced and 18 percent were on social welfare.
The report said there was a potential to save £8 million a year just from cases already investigated and a further significant yield if all cases were dealt with promptly.
The report’s main recommendation is to make the existing system work properly with more staff and increased use of current powers. It also suggested a range of other measures:
€ more court action to recover money;
€ make enforceable interim assessments where liable relatives refuse to co-operate;
€ change the law to allow cash to be seized through an attachment order on their weekly paycheck;
€ require unmarried applicants to state the name of the father.