Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to make it clear to Ms Gibbons that I did not say I believed lone parents were bad parents, because I know many of them and I have contact with many lone parents through my work, particularly with regard to housing difficulties in Dublin, about which parents with two children, who are perhaps expecting another, come to see me. Many of the young parents I know are not the first generation of lone parents but may be the second or third generation. I was trying to emphasise that to Ms Gibbons and may not have been clear in what I said. There is a history of lone parents over two and three generations in some communities. I had a young family, although my baby is now 20 and has just finished college. Many young people who were in school with my daughter have lost out on advancing their education because they had children younger and therefore found it difficult to get back into the system. I have no doubt that the youth projects are doing a wonderful job in trying to work locally with young people who left school at a particular age. Ms Gibbons said the numbers involved were falling but I remain concerned about the people who come to my clinics with a housing query because they are very young. Not only do some of them have one child but they may be expecting another. I am concerned about that cycle, particularly in certain communities. That is the reason I asked the question about the agency. Does Ms Gibbons see the agency having a role in trying to encourage people to hold off having a family until they complete their education and get a job or work experience? In my role as a public representative and, long before I went into politics, as a voluntary community representative I found there was a generation of people coming through who were lone parents and within whose families there was a cycle of not attending school and not sitting the junior or leaving certificate. I remain concerned that I continue to see the same picture, which has not changed dramatically, in my work today that I saw in my work when I was a teenager in a youth club. I am trying to get my head around that. I know the agency and the board have the specific task of bringing together people from the various groups but I ask that the board examine that situation because it is a real problem in some, although not all, communities. I did not use the word "problem" to describe a lone parent.