Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, United Left) | Oireachtas source

The 2006 report must be seen against a backdrop of nearly full employment or when we all thought we had full employment and that things would never change. Things have changed drastically and that must be taken into consideration. I would like the committee to seriously tease out whether we are putting a cohort of people into more deprivation than is the case currently. The SILC report referred to a rate of 63% in 2013. I asked Mr. Egan about the reduction in employment rates. He said in 2013 it was 36% but it has increased slightly. He said the number of lone parents on community employment, CE, schemes reduced from approximately 10,000 jobs to 1,800 jobs. They were majorly impacted from that point of view. Mr. Egan said the numbers have gone up again.

There are questions to be asked about the quality of jobs done by lone parents but we have not heard anything about that. Questions must also be asked about why the Government introduced legislation in 2012 that put people in work in a position where they could lose up to €53. I find that phenomenal. We are not even talking about the cohort of lone parents who are not working as they have not been able to find work. We are talking about people who will lose out substantially in their weekly income because of those changes. That beggars belief. The committee must tease out the matter with the Department in terms of whether we can stand over it. I would like the committee to consider whether to recommend to the Minister that the initiative would go ahead and how long the change should last. The issue must be linked to child care. It was not part of the legislation, but we were emphatically told in the Dáil Chamber by the Minister, Deputy Burton, that none of the changes would be introduced unless affordable child care was specifically introduced in the budget. That has not happened. I do not understand how we can put so many lone parents into a situation where they are caught between a rock and a hard place. We cannot stand over that. We must take hard decisions in the committee today or else have a specific meeting to discuss the issue more broadly. Half an hour will not be sufficient to deal with these issues.