Ms Audry Deane:

There was a drop of 4% in the working aid social welfare payments in each of 2010 and 2011, and after that we have not had any further cuts to core rates. There has been a relatively large and persistent erosion of or change in eligibility entitlements to various social welfare payments. As an example, the Union of Students in Ireland has referenced the change in the jobseeker's benefit and allowance and specifically the number of contributions needed to get access to the various schemes. There has also been a change to the rent supplement scheme. We know the social impact assessment of the main welfare and direct taxation measures in the last budget, and that households with children - particularly with lone parents, to which we will refer - have been worst affected by these measures. Despite the purely economic stance and the idea that the budget has technically not been regressive, we know from various sources that the impact of the ancillary changes to eligibility and entitlement have created significant problems for those dependent on payments.

Lone parents are an important cohort for us, not least because they form the biggest cohort with which we work. Members are aware that this group experiences the most consistent poverty, at 16.4%, and it also experiences relative poverty. Some 56% of the group experience deprivation, which is a shocking statistic for households with children. The explicit changes to eligibility, earnings disregards and, most recently, the jobseeker's transitional payment are having a cumulative and shocking effect on income in these households. We do not have time to go through it, but the recent parliamentary questions have been most helpful in revealing the amounts of money being lost because of earnings disregard changes.

There is no question there. In fact, since budget 2009 the lone-parent household has suffered an income loss of €847.60, and that does not even factor in the child benefit universal payment.

This committee has heard often about what the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice has offered us. We believe it has a very large role to contribute to the area of and approach to equality budgeting. Its rigorous and robust data, based on a very robust methodology, clearly show that the Irish taxation and social welfare systems do not work coherently to support those on the lowest incomes. Social welfare transfers alone provided an income which allowed for a minimum essential standard of living in only 11 out of the 208 households that it forensically examined. That is a quite shocking statistic. This is obviously due to critical failures at policy level and in integrated policy decision making. It is ripe ground to look at for equality budgeting.

To conclude, equality budgeting can be used to reduce inequalities and improve outcomes for disadvantaged groups and, indeed, help to deal with the gender issue regarding lone parents, which does not have to be spelt out to the audience today. If this is done coherently and with a long-term view, it would be a most useful tool for all of us.