Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the officials and thank them for their presentation. Previous speakers have highlighted the amazing number of holes and anomalies in this policy approach and it seems that each time the Department attempts to put a patch on one, another issue arises. There is a patchwork of measures in place to cover over a fundamentally flawed approach. I will not touch on them or the many new problems arising, but I will do so, if we have time later. There will be more holes because people continue to face real life challenges.

I thank Ms Ryan for delving into the origins of this issue. While it is worth revisiting, it may also be worth throwing a different eye over it. The fundamental problem highlighted at the beginning, for example, in the Babies and Bosses reports and others was the limited engagement by the State or its failure to engage with lone parents and to support them adequately in accessing education and employment. It was not a failure of lone parents, many of whom were striving to improve their lives and access opportunities. The 2006 report mentioned by Ms Ryan contained proposals to support lone parents. I question the way it was framed because it did not focus on conditionality as the main issue. It referred to what a meaningful set of supports for lone parents would look like. It was a combination of the child care and social supports needed, as well as education and training opportunities. The narrative was to provide support for lone parents in accessing opportunities, not conditionality. It is, therefore, important that we do not retrospectively pick out one aspect which was focused on to the detriment of the thrust of the report. At the time, many lone parent groups engaged with the constructive proposals made in it which were then lost, for example, those relating to the introduction of Scandinavian child care models.

A fundamental problem with which the Department needs to wrestle in all of its schemes is the underlying assumptions, or push and pull. Rather than focusing on the pull factor of greater supports and incentives for lone parents, there is an assumption that we need to move towards giving a "push" and focus on conditionality.

The obstacle all along has been the assumption that lone parents, some of the busiest people in Ireland, are somehow not looking, pushing for or seeking opportunities. That fundamental assumption is visible across many other areas and I hope we will question it when we come to deal with other areas, such as qualified adults.

We need to focus on the pull and the supports, rather than a narrative of conditionality because that narrative has brought all of these problems upon the Department and upon lone parents. The assumption is that we need to move people to the live register before we can give them decent training and opportunities. Why were all the case workers with their personal development plans not directed to those on the one-parent family payment? I am sure there are many who would have appreciated a heavy investment in resources in that area. Instead they must first be pushed into the live register. That clearly does not work. The jobseeker's transitional payment has been introduced. It should actively recognise the value of caring but instead of an active engagement, it has waived the requirement for full-time employment, which is a small step and is not enough. However, by putting people on jobseeker's transitional payment, the Department lost visibility of lone parents in the system and was no longer able to respond in the same appropriate way to their concerns. I recognise this was a political decision not that of the witnesses who are officials.

If I believe we have used the wrong cart we have also put that cart in front of the horse. The measures were not adequately or appropriately designed and were implemented well ahead of any of the ameliorative supports being put in place. Any response now comes afterwards. We talked about 3,000 lone parents whose income has improved, out of 43,000, that is less than 10% of those who have been moved. When we say "they moved" we should be clear they "were moved" from the one-parent family payment. That leaves more than 90% of lone parents whose income has not been shown to have improved. As for the 4,500 appointments with case workers, that is less than 10% of all those who have been moved. Child care hours run to tens of thousands for the women, mainly, who have been moved, while the number of child care places accessed is in the hundreds. These people have been shown to be the poorest in the country and most at risk of deprivation, and to have the least wealth resources, according to the wealth survey last year. They do not have something to fall back on while things are being sorted or child care is being arranged. They do not have reserves. People only go without and deprive themselves when they have to make hard choices on the basics of life. We have asked them to carry this period of transition rather than front-loading a period of support and transition before asking people to engage with them.

The risk that has been thrust onto lone parents applies at an even more dangerous level to maintenance payments. The Department - because of the anomalies, because it is the live register and jobseeker's transitional payment and not one-parent family payment - has not only sent the message to absent parents that it will not look for maintenance but has placed a requirement on lone parents to contact partners, including partners who potentially engaged in domestic violence. Whether it has been proved or not, many lone parents who might have been affected by domestic abuse have a genuine fear of being forced to chase up and press a former partner and they fear the penalties if they do not. The human rights report was mentioned but we have a public sector duty, which affects the Department and which I am sure the Minister is cognisant of because we raise it with him all the time, to ensure human rights and equality. We also have a duty in respect of poverty proofing. We have commitments to gender and equality proofing in the budget. There is nothing more clear than that this is a gendered issue because it affects women in the majority. Surely all of these considerations give us an opportunity and a mandate to go back and re-examine this policy.

I believe the Department has engaged constructively with anomaly after anomaly. I recognise it has sought to change the policy in respect of reducing income disregard when that was shown not to be working. I believe it can now take the Millar report and all those strong mandates which it does have, as an opportunity to review, consider a change in direction and maybe to learn from some of the mistakes made around that process. I will not discuss the specific issues but I know the witnesses are aware of them because I have spoken to Mr. Egan about anomalies in connection with back to education, the student universal support, SUSI, grants, the education and training board, ETB, courses and rent allowance, that patchwork of measures. In respect of those who are not on jobseeker's transitional payment but on jobseeker's allowance and who have teenage children, the excellent research by the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice, which the Department funded, on minimum essential standards of living showed that the cost of raising a teenager in Ireland is much higher than that of a younger child yet those lone parents on jobseeker's allowance who have a child aged more than 14 are completely invisible in respect of that cost.