Ms Simonetta Ryan:

I thank the Chairman for the opportunity to re-engage with the committee because a number of things have happened since we first appeared before it. I am Simonetta Ryan, assistant secretary at the Department of Social Protection, and I am joined today by my colleagues, Mr. Niall Egan, principal officer of working age and child income policy, Mr. Erika Klein, assistant principal officer of working age and child income policy, and Ms Fiona Ward, divisional manager of the Dublin south division. In the course of my statement I will touch on the review that commenced last October, which is when we first appeared before the committee. I will also update the committee on a number of other things that have happened in the interim.

My opening statement today is an update for the committee on progress made with some of the issues raised previously and the changes that have occurred affecting lone parents since our last appearance. At that time we discussed the significant reforms to the one-parent family payment which have been under way since budget 2011 and have seen the age of the youngest child for receipt of the payment gradually reduce to seven years of age. The committee has met several times since our appearance last October and has spoken to a variety of representative bodies in the intervening period. I stated at our last appearance that it will take several years before the full impact of the reforms can be assessed. That has been borne out by a number of comments since and also comments I heard today. This is due to the fact that lone parents, on foot of the reforms, will take up education, training or employment support programmes which will take time for them to complete.

The Department has begun engaging, on a proactive and supported basis, with lone parents whose youngest child is seven years or older. To date, more than 9,000 lone parents of the 14,500 lone parents who are on the jobseeker’s transitional payment have been selected for activation. This is double the number of lone parents who were selected for activation by October 2016. It is the first time the Department has actively engaged with lone parents on this scale with a view to improving their circumstances through access to education, training and employment supports. This is a very significant step forward, which it is hoped is acknowledged by everybody, in addressing the poverty rates for these families. More than 6,000 of those 9,000 lone parents are in the activation phase, which means that they have already been selected for activation and have been case managed, are scheduled for an engagement or are awaiting an appointment time. The remaining 3,000 individuals have been fully case managed, which means they have met a case officer, have agreed a personal plan and are progressing with this plan, which includes moving into education and training on foot of their engagement.

Since our last appearance, the Department has continued to meet lone parent representative groups in a number of different fora. One of the issues raised with us related to training supports for lone parents. Some of the lone parent representative groups raised a concern with the Department about lone parents participating in education and training board, ETB, or vocational training opportunities scheme, VTOS, courses who were in receipt of the jobseeker’s transitional payment. Once these individuals commenced on these courses, they were transferred to a training allowance administered by the Department of Education and Skills. The potential difficulty highlighted to us was that the rules for payment of the VTOS or ETB allowance were related to attendance at the course. This could have resulted in a reduced payment for a lone parent where he or she could not always attend perhaps due to the ill health of their child or other unexpected circumstances. The Department reviewed this situation internally and with the Department of Education and Skills. On 16 November 2016, an instruction was issued to all Intreo offices to continue payment of the jobseeker’s transitional payment to lone parents undertaking such courses rather than moving them to a training allowance.

At our last appearance, my colleague, Fiona Ward, provided the committee with an update on the engagements with lone parents in her division, which includes Tallaght, including some of the customised training that had been organised. These engagements have continued, with some very positive results. For example, the Department’s case officers liaised with Tallaght ETB which then developed a programme, called Pre-Employment (Return to Work), specifically tailored to lone parents on the jobseeker’s transitional payment. The course ran from October to December 2016 with 16 participants, two of whom secured employment and many of whom now wish to progress to other courses and employment. This course will run again from February this year. Invitations also issued to lone parents for events targeted to their needs such as a jobs week "Transitioning Back to the Workforce" information morning. Ms Ward will be happy to provide the committee with more detail on this item today.

As the committee is aware, the Department of Education and Skills is taking the lead on a programme for Government commitment to carry out independent research on the barriers to third level education for lone parents. The Department of Education and Skills selected researchers from NUI Maynooth to carry out this work. Our Department has been consulted along with officials from that Department and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs by the researchers from NUI Maynooth. A draft report was received and considered in late September 2016. The Department of Education and Skills accepted at that stage that the timeframe was extremely tight for delivery of the report and that, with more time, the output would be more worthwhile. A second draft was circulated by the Department of Education and Skills late last week and we will be reviewing that as soon as feasible.

I assure the committee that while the report was not completed within the planned timeframe, it was sufficiently progressed during 2016 to help inform relevant budget 2017 discussions.

Budget 2017 continues to build on the improvements that were implemented for lone parents in budgets 2015 and 2016 and will result in further increases in overall income for lone parents. The measures that benefit lone parents include a €5 increase in the one-parent family payment, jobseeker’s transitional payment, jobseeker’s allowance and the back to education allowance with effect from March 2017. The budget also includes a new €500 per annum cost-of-education allowance for parents, including lone parents, in receipt of the back to education allowance. The income disregard for parents receiving the one-parent family payment and the jobseeker’s transitional payment was increased by €20 per week from €90 to €110 with effect from 5 January 2017, while a Christmas bonus of 85% was paid in early December. Furthermore, the national minimum wage has increased to €9.25 an hour and this may benefit some lone parents working outside the home.

The increase in the one-parent family payment and jobseeker’s transitional payment income disregards that took effect from 5 January will benefit approximately 17,500 lone parents. On foot of the measures for lone parents contained in budget 2017, a lone parent on the jobseeker’s transitional payment working 15 hours at the national minimum wage will see an increase in his or her overall income of almost €15 per week or €780 per annum, from approximately €332 in 2016 to €347 in 2017. This is as a result of the increase in the national minimum wage, the increase in the income disregard for this payment and the rate increase of €5 per week. Since 2015, this lone parent will have seen an increase of almost €43 per week or over €2,200 per annum between take home pay and State support. A lone parent on the one-parent family payment working 15 hours at the national minimum wage will see an increase in his or her overall income of almost €16 per week or over €830 per annum, from approximately €338 in 2016 to €354 in 2017. This is as a result of the increase in the national minimum wage, the increase in the income disregard for this payment and the rate increase of €5 per week.

A social impact assessment using the ESRI's simulating welfare and income tax changes, SWITCH, model on a non-indexed basis of the social welfare budget package finds that people who are in the lower-income quintile gain the most from budget 2017 measures. This includes lone parents. The ESRI recognises explicitly that this was as a result of the inclusion of the weekly rate increase for working-age rates of payment. In the case of lone parents, the Department’s social impact assessment of the impact of budget 2017 shows an increase of 1.2% for working lone parents and 4.5% for those who are not working. This represents a cumulative increase across budgets 2015, 2016 and 2017 of 4% for working lone parents and 6.9% for lone parents who are not working, which is substantially above the cumulative gain for average households of 3.3%. This shows definite progress with the commitment to reducing poverty for lone parents and their families.

The single affordable child care scheme being provided by the Government will also significantly improve the provision and cost of child care for lone parents and is a step-change in State support for child care in Ireland. This will assist lone parents in low-income employment. The Department is contributing to the work underway in the Department of Children and Youth Affairs on this new scheme.

Separate to the specific measures introduced in the budget, the committee will be aware that as part of the debate on the Social Welfare Bill 2016, the Minister for Social Protection agreed to undertake a number of different reports across a range of areas. The Minister agreed that the Department would commission an independent report on the one-parent family payment reforms and this commitment was included in the Act. The report is to examine the financial and social effects of the amendments to the scheme made since 1 January 2012, taking into account the poverty rates and welfare dependency of those impacted by the reforms. The Minister committed to producing the report as quickly as possible and no later than August 2017, as it will be required to feed into the budget 2018 discussions.

The Department has since prioritised this work within the one-parent family payment policy unit. A request for tender, RFT, is being issued with the relevant procurement rules, procedures and timeframes that apply. The Department has been in discussions with the Office of Government Procurement, OGP, to determine if the request for tender can be issued within one of its existing frameworks. If this is possible, it would be the most efficient and effective way of procuring the required review. The OGP advised that the best approach is to issue an outline of the RFT to potential providers engaged under their framework seeking expressions of interest. The Department supplied the necessary outline to the Office of Government Procurement on 19 December 2016 and the request for expressions of interest issued from the OGP on 20 December 2016, with a closing date of 11 January 2017.

The Department will consult the Office of Government Procurement in the coming days on the results of this process and the next steps. Any procurement process is time consuming and must adhere to the relevant procurement rules with regard to the process, timelines and evaluation of proposals. The timeframe for this report is, therefore, ambitious. However, the Department is making every effort to progress this as quickly as possible while adhering to the rules.

Mr. Egan may wish to comment on the structure of the review or the initial question put to me.