A senior Minister reportedly intends to push ahead with plans to link child benefit to school attendance.

The Programme for Government seemed to suggest that the minority Government may bring in new laws in this area.

It stated: “We will reform the monitoring of child benefit payments by amalgamating the two existing school attendance monitoring systems, currently run by the Department of Education and Tusla, to address poor attendance within some families.”

The Irish Daily Mail reported this morning that Denis Naughten believes that he has strong support for the motion, despite the Government appearing to row back on it.

Minister Naughten said that teachers and Fine Gael TDs have encouraged him to stick with the plan.

Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar has recently said that teachers do not need another tool like this to combat truancy.

“The common view that we have as three Ministers is that those who are involved in education welfare and involved in monitoring truancy do not believe that giving them a further tool in which to enforce good attendance by withholding child benefit … would be useful,” he said.