FAMILIES should be offered incentives to have a third child, said Efthymios Strouthos yesterday, president of the Pancyprian Organisation of Five-member Families (POPO), calling the proposed government measures to cut large family benefits ‘unacceptable.’
Strouthos said what will really force such families to tighten their purse strings is that benefits would be only provided every three months or yearly, instead of on a monthly basis, as under the current system.
“What they don’t understand is that people need the allowance monthly to pay off loans among other things and now they’ll get it every three months,” said Strouthos.
The measures will also target student and child benefits by introducing income criteria. According to the cuts proposed, all families earning over €89,000 a year would stop getting benefits and lower-income families would be targeted on a sliding scale, with those earning €39,000 or less not being affected by cuts.
The proposed measures had large families protesting outside the House on Thursday, while a pamphlet released by the Large Families Association (POP) to its members outlines the proposed measures and how large families will be affected.
The new steps would re-define the meaning of a large family, so that if a family has two children who are dependents and two who are university students, they are considered a two-child family. The family would no longer receive an allowance for having two students at university, as they are no longer considered dependants, regardless of the family’s income.
Thus, a large family with an annual income of €25,000 and four children, two of whom are undergraduates and two of whom are still in school, will have an 83-per cent reduction in total. Firstly, they will no longer get benefits for the two undergraduates and then 70 per cent of the benefits they receive for the two school children would be removed, as part of the measures involve a 70 per cent cut in benefits for families with one or/and two dependants.
So if, under the current system, they received €560 worth of benefits a month (€6,720 a year), under the proposed measures they would now get a yearly allowance of €1,150, or €95 a month.
Even the age at which a person is considered a dependant will be slashed, from 23 to 18 for girls and from 25 to 20 for boys.
“What if someone is over 18 and unemployed, living at home? That means they won’t get anything for them,” said Strouthos.
Additionally, the benefits allocated to a large family with three dependants will be cut by 40 per cent, regardless of income, and around 81 per cent of benefits provided to a large family when they have one undergraduate and two schoolchildren will be slashed.
At the moment, those earning under €19,000 receive €154, those earning between €19,500 and €39,000 receive €140 and those earning €39,000 and above get €115 for each child they have at university.
Apart from the benefits for each child attending university, around 33 per cent of the grant provided to students for their fees will be done away with if there are only two university students in the family, according to POP and Strouthos – once more, regardless of income. This also applies if the family consists of one university student and one dependant or just one university student.
All undergraduates currently receive a €1,700 grant. However, students belonging to a large family get an €850 allowance on top of that. This will also be done away with, with families subject to a further reduction in grants based on their income.
POP make the comparison between a large family which has four or five children – out of which two or three are undergraduates and two who are schoolchildren – and a family with one or two schoolchildren, each with an annual income of €35,000. The large family will lose around 83 per cent of its benefits according to the measures, as they will not receive benefits for the university-goers, but the family with one or two pupils will remain unaffected.
POP currently has 30,000 large families registered with it, out of which 12,850 receive benefits. POPO has 20,000 families registered with it but could not provide figures on how many receive benefits, only that all of the registered families have at least one dependant
