269 Miss Flaherty asked the Minister for Social Welfare his views on a basic income for children and a general basic income for all. [22661/96]

In relation to basic income for children, it is now widely recognised that some aspects of the State's income support for children contribute to poverty traps and disincentives to work. As stated in the Government programme, this Government is committed to working towards a basic income system for children. We have already been taking the first steps in this regard. We have been gradually improving child benefit, while reducing the relative importance of child dependant allowances. Child benefit has been increased by 45 per cent since this Government took office.

The expert working group on the integration of the tax and social welfare systems, which reported earlier this year, identified reform of child income support as one of the key priorities for future development of the tax and social welfare systems. The expert group rejected a full basic income for children on the basis of its high cost (around £400 million in additional annual expenditure), and because much of the gains would go to families on higher earnings. The expert group put forward three more selective approaches to income support for children. I am currently examining these, with a view to determining the best way of moving towards our overall objective of making income support for children more independent of the labour force status of their parents.