Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I start to get very worried when I hear phrases such as, "To further encourage lone parents to take up employment or increase their hours of employment," and then see the statement, “Staff of the Department are actively promoting both the back to work family dividend and family income supplement.” I would like to know how staff actively encourage a lone parent with a child aged seven or eight years to get back to work when those with nothing but free time find it difficult to find work. I am not getting at the officials, but the policy being pursued by the Department seems, covertly, to be forcing single parents to feel they need to desert their children in the evening and find a job. It is next to impossible for some of the people concerned to find work. I sometimes wonder whether the planners know what it is like to live in poverty for one day. Have they ever had a day when they were stuck at home? When this issue was debated in the Seanad, I said this was an oppressive approach to dealing what had to be an horrendous situation for some lone parents.