We assess personal and child maintenance payments as means. We will add up maintenance from more than one person and assess the total amount.
You can pay rent or mortgage of up to €95.23 a week without it affecting how we assess your maintenance payments. However, we assess half the balance of any maintenance payments over this amount.
You must give evidence of housing costs, such as a rent receipt or a rent book from your landlord or a statement of your mortgage repayments.
Example:
You are a qualified parent with two qualified children. You get maintenance of €80.00 a week and pay rent of €35.00 a week.
Weekly maintenance: €80.00
Minus weekly rent: €35.00
Balance of maintenance: €45.00
Divided by 2 = weekly means €22.50
In this example, you would get One-Parent Family Payment of €232.60 (2011 Rates) a week (a personal rate of €173.00 and two increases for a qualified child, €29.80 each).
For more information, log on to 'www.welfare.ie'.