Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Apologies. He referred to a significant worsening of the situation for lone parents who are working, and the figures are set out in the document. SPARK might confirm that it does not even include the impact of the loss of the concurrent payment, which is on top of this, and, therefore, we have had a double whammy of dramatic proportions. I would like to hear what the Department has to say about that because in terms of the logic the Minister outlined when all these measures were being brought in and about which there was much heated debate in the Dáil at the time about labour activation, we have unequivocal evidence that the opposite is the case. What we have got is labour deactivation and disincentivisation, and that is reflected in the fall-off in the numbers of people on community enterprise schemes that he has just acknowledged. It strikes me, but I would like to hear his comment on it, that there has to be some correlation between this and the dramatic figures we have seen recently in terms of increased levels of deprivation and increased levels of child poverty among lone parents. I suspect a big cohort of that child poverty increase is the children of lone parents. The reason I was not here earlier was because I was attending a young people's protest about child suicide, which is awful. I am not saying there is a direct correlation with that but in terms of deprivation and a worsening situation for lone parents who are hit disproportionately, is there an acknowledgement on the part of the Department that we have got this wrong and that it needs to be remedied?

On the issue of the carers, which may have been raised by other members, I asked some questions about this and-----