Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Lest anything I said in the past has been misconstrued, I do not deny for one second that there is child poverty. Of course, there is. I also acknowledge that the rate of poverty among children is higher than it is among adults. The rate of child poverty in Ireland is significantly higher than the rate of among pensioners. I acknowledge that the rate of poverty among children in households where someone is parenting alone is higher than it is in households where there are two parents. While we might disagree on the percentage, I do not deny and totally accept that there is a problem. How I think we should deal with it may be different. We should deal with it by having more lone parents in work rather than in receipt of welfare payments and focusing on services such as child care rather than transfers. Where there are transfers, the best way to deal with child poverty is through having a new system of transfers. I hope the working family payment will do this. It will be a targeted payment to reduce child poverty and which will not take much interest in whether a person is married or cohabiting or otherwise or even whether he or she is working. I would like to see it, if one likes, as a second tier of child benefit for lower income families. This is probably the best way to deal with child poverty.

On the amendments, the Deputies will be aware that my Department administers more than 65 separate schemes and services which serve a diverse group of clients, including families, employees and employers, jobseekers, people with disabilities, carers and older people. All of the schemes and services are kept under constant review, with a view to ensuring they continue to meet the needs of my Department's customers. In line with the programme for Government and the responsibilities of my Department more generally, a number of specific reviews are under way or will commence shortly. They include a review of the back to work family dividend which will be a focused policy assessment which is being undertaken. It is examining the rationale underpinning the scheme and its effectiveness in helping families to transition from welfare payments to work. A formal review of the jobseeker's transition payment will commence in 2017. It will take the form of a value for money review and examine the payment since its inception in 2013.

With regard to the working family payment, in line with the programme for Government the effectiveness of the family income supplement scheme is currently being examined along with a range of other supports for jobseekers and those in employment in the context of developing a new working family payment. On the issue of reduced rates of jobseeker's allowance for young jobseekers, the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, is currently undertaking research to examine the effectiveness of the reduced rates of jobseeker’s allowance in encouraging young jobseekers to avail of education, training and employment programmes and opportunities. The findings of this research will inform my Department’s review of the effectiveness of the reduced rates in encouraging young jobseekers into employment, education or training. A review of the community employment, CE, scheme has been completed and the findings of that review are now being considered. The proposed amendments call for the laying of reports before the House following a review of the impact of the increase in the national minimum wage on income thresholds for social welfare, the household benefits package, eligibility criteria for qualifying for jobseeker’s benefit, eligibility criteria for the State contributory pension and changes introduced to the one-parent family payment in 2012, which I know is the matter of most concern to Deputies in the House, given their comments. As I have indicated when I attended this committee recently, my officials and I will continue to work closely with the Oireachtas joint committee and will continue to regularly appear before the committee to present and respond on matters of interest to the committee, including the reports that I have mentioned, as well as addressing issues such those that affect lone parents and the working family payment.

From listening to Deputies just now, the obvious major concern is around the changes that were made to the one-parent family welfare entitlements. The difficulty in doing any review now is that it is still early days and, as with any reform, it may take a number of years before the full impact of the measure is known. We know already that 3,000 lone parents have moved from a weekly payment to family income supplement and therefore, by definition, have moved out of poverty. That is positive. There are a number of measures in the budget to assist lone parents back to education, to allow them to keep more earned income if they are working, and to increase their weekly payments whether they are working or not. Again, we will not know the impact of those measures for some time.

Deputies are aware of the Millar and Crosse report on activation. We had hoped that good advice would come out of the report on what activation measures work. Unfortunately the report fell short in that regard. It was not, and does not claim to be, an analysis of the impact of the changes - made by the previous Government - on lone parents. The report was based on interviews with people from interest groups and with a number of lone parents. It was not an econometric analysis of how the changes impacted on people across the board, but perhaps that is merited. I would be open to asking my Department to commission a report from an independent body such as the ESRI, or another body, to actually carry out that assessment and have a look back on the impact of the changes. For some people the changes have been positive. For others they have been negative. Perhaps it is an appropriate time to ask such an independent body to carry out an analysis to be published within six months. I would prefer to not have that written into the legislation but if Deputies are willing to do that I would be happy to make a commitment that we would commission such an analysis and have it done within six months. This may help us to inform any decisions we make going in to the budget negotiations in September 2017.