Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 12 January 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection

Issues Facing Lone Parents: Discussion (Resumed)

11:00 am

Photo of Kevin HumphreysKevin Humphreys (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank both sets of delegates for their submissions and presentations. I agree with Mr. Allen that we must place a greater emphasis on what does and does not work. Sometimes there is a hesitancy around doing that level of research because people are frightened they will get clipped around the ears if the report does not come out exactly as they might want. Mr. Allen referred to the last Government's focus on prioritising social housing. I saw an unintentional consequence of that in the inner city whereby it created a pull to homelessness, with people becoming homeless sooner than needed to be the case. There is a need for careful balancing in any provision and ongoing reviews to ensure there are no such intended consequences to a particular initiative.

In a report on the back to education scheme, the ESRI has found that people who go into employment rather than education come out of poverty sooner. I am interested in the witnesses' insight on this in respect of their client base. During the Christmas break, I worked out that I interacted with 700 to 800 lone parents last year. We see a wide spectrum in terms of people's circumstances, how the various interventions and working and whether any unintentional consequences are arising. The single most beneficial programme I have seen is the early education intervention, which offers supports to preschool children. I seen many case of intergenerational lone parenting, with three generations having the same outcome, even where there has been access to the back to education initiative. In one case, a person obtained good qualifications but never went on to practise as an accountant. There are a lot of interventions in operation but we continue to see the same outcome within family groups.

What is Mr. Allen's view on the need to build automatic reviews into policy decisions? One of the positive things the Department of Social Protection did in respect of the Gender Recognition Act was to include a provision that a review of the legislation be conducted after a year. Sometimes it takes much longer to see how a particular provision is working. I have always considered the back to education scheme to be a very long-term initiative which might not show benefits for families for ten to 15 years. As I said, however, the ESRI report indicates that the most positive impact on a family arises where the head of household goes into work.

This has, by far, a more positive impact than that person going back to education. I would have thought the opposite. I would have expected lone parents to be on a relatively low level of income and that there would not be a positive outcome for them.

I very much like the idea of building in an automatic review. However, expecting and accepting that we may not get the answers we like is, as Roosevelt used to say, a case of trying something, hoping it works and doing the research and, if it does not work, moving on and trying something else. We are always too frightened to make mistakes and that stops us from trying new ideas.

I thank the witnesses. I had the opportunity to work with many of them previously. One of the most challenging things we have to try to target is to break down intergenerational poverty through children. From my small amount of research I have carried out, I know that early intervention at preschool level has, by some distance, the most positive impact.

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