Adequate minimum income. The Government has continued a redistributive policy focus in recent Budgets by maintaining the value of the main weekly social welfare payments in order to protect the most vulnerable in society, despite the requirements for significant adjustments as part of fiscal consolidation under the EU/IMF programme. 14 xxxxx://xxx.xxxxxxx.xx/en/downloads/National-Action-Plan-for-Social-Inclusion-2007-2016.pdf The measures set out below are funded from the Irish Exchequer and will also support Ireland in addressing related issues in the 2014 CSRs. The Family Income Supplement is a weekly tax-free top-up payment for employees on low pay with children. Childcare supports - to support the provision of early childhood care and education through three childcare support programmes – the Childcare Education and Training Support (CETS) programme, the Community Childcare Subvention (CCS) programme and the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme. Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programme provides for a free pre-school year and was introduced in January 2010. The Community Childcare Subvention (CCS) programme provides funding to community childcare services to enable them to provide quality childcare at reduced rates to disadvantaged and low income working parents. Parents qualify as disadvantaged or low income on the basis of means-tested entitlements. The Childcare Education and Training Support (CETS) programme allows low income parents take up training and education opportunities. A subset of the CETS programme is the After-school Child Care (ASCC) scheme, targeted at low-income families with children at primary school, where parents are availing of employment opportunities. A Working Family Dividend scheme was introduced in Budget 2015 to help support low income families to take up employment opportunities through the continued provision of child-related income supports for a period of time in employment. The payment will allow an unemployed or lone parent family to keep the Qualified Child Increase (IQC) for a period of up to 2 years after transitioning from unemployment into work. The family will keep 100% of the IQC in year 1 dropping down to 50% in year 2. The cost in 2015 of this measure is €22m. The Advisory Group on Tax and Social Welfare was established in June 2011 to address a number of specific issues and make cost-effective proposals for improving employment incentives and achieving better poverty outcomes, particularly chi...
