Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Good morning. I understand, as has been said already by the officials appearing before the committee today, that they are responsible for the administration of the payments and not the policy. There are however some points I wish to make. The cuts to lone parent payments were probably the most controversial cuts during the austerity years because they have impacted so hard, particularly on the parents who are working. At the time we had this discussion in 2015 we made the figures very clear for the Department with regard to the example of a lone parent with one child earning €8.65 per hour, which was the baseline used by SPARK.

Someone who was working 20 hours pre-July 2015 would have been on a wage pf €173 a week, in receipt of the OFPA of €176, family income supplement and the fuel allowance, giving him or her an income of €453. By July 2017, lone parents will have lost €80 of that sum. We brought these figures to the Minister and the Department never questioned them. They were accepted as being close enough to the correct figures. Lone parents who are working 20 hours a week will lose 18% over the two years; those working 28 hours, 14%; and those working 35 hours, 11%. I do not know how the Department can state these working parents have not lost out. The issue should be addressed in the next period as a matter of policy. SPARK has come up with a few effective measures in its pre-budget submission to address the impact of the different payments and so on.

I wish to raise a child maintenance issue. In July 2015, 15,000 lone parents were transferred from the OFPA to the jobseeker's transition payment. When the legislation was being drafted for that payment, the Department forgot to include a provision covering a liable relative. As a result, in October 2015, it wrote to thousands of dads to tell them that as their former partner was no longer in receipt of the OPFA, they had no further obligation to the Department to pay maintenance for their child, unless a court order was in place. This has resulted in a significant reduction in the maintenance payments made to single parents. Non-custodial parents have received letters telling them that they are no longer obliged to pay maintenance, yet the parent raising a child is expected to seek maintenance because the Department told him or her to do so. I would like to hear a comment on this because the lone parents in question have been put in a difficult position as they have to approach their partners to seek maintenance, even where they have had rows with them, when it should be paid directly.

I understand the reason the officials say they do not make policy, but there are other issues, particularly the poverty rate among lone parents with children aged under 18 years, which stands at 22.1%. It is 7.9% for families comprising two adults with one to three children aged under 18 years, while it is 11.9% for other households with children aged under 18.

Last Sunday I participated in a debate with a Minister. I asked him why the Government would not introduce a financial transactions tax. He replied that the reason it would not entertain something like it was that it felt jobs would be lost. We have a scenario where the circumstances of many one-parent families were not poverty proofed. We tend not to protect those who are most vulnerable. I would like the officials to examine the suggestions made in the SPARK pre-budget submission to tackle the measures in which they believe they were dreadfully let down.