Ms Simonetta Ryan:

In fairness, there are many reports on the area of lone parents going back many years, and we do not always do a response on them. We were asked about this particular report and we made some comments on it. I would not say we rubbished the report. I accept there is some interesting and useful material in it about the international position, people's views and so on, but we have our own views of some of the statements in the report, some of which are contradictory. The report does acknowledge that the overall thrust of policy around activation is sound. I do not have the sentence in front of me but there is a reference to that effect in the report.

In terms of policy direction, in anything I have ever read there is general agreement, subject to all the other issues, on policy direction and the importance of supporting lone parents into work, education etc. However, when we get into the detail, issues arise, and then there are other consequences from that. I cannot honestly say that the Department intended to critique the report. I am not sure if that will help anybody.

In terms of our views on the reforms, as I stated at the outset, we are aware of the different views of various people on those, and the inputs from them on this area. Some of those have already led to significant changes being made to these reforms. The next wave of that process will be on the jobseeker's transition payment to see what happens and identify the challenges.

I would accept from reading other reports in this space that in terms of working with lone parents who are very distant from the labour market, it is not easy to design programmes for them because they face particular challenges, some of which Ms Ward outlined. We had hoped the report would have given us something more specific around that, but perhaps that was a big ask. It might be something that we just have to tailor at local office level, which is what we are trying to do. I cannot honestly say that the Department had intended to produce a critique of the report.