Dr. Katriona O'Sullivan:

I will respond first to what the Deputy said about the Taoiseach's comments about dream jobs and getting real. The reality is it is not the truth for everybody. A person is allowed to get his or her dream job if that person comes from a certain sector, but if he or she does not come from that background, it seems that person is not allowed to get his or her dream job. For me and for many of the people in my community, there is no chance of that and their dreams are limited by their backgrounds. In the schools in Dublin 1, for example, the boys are dreaming of being soccer players and the girls are dreaming of being Kim Kardashian because their exposure to the kinds of jobs they can have and the things they can do is limited. It is not just about a dream job, it is about how a person dreams and the fact that he or she cannot dream certain dreams. I will not go on a rant about that because I will be here all day.

The Deputy asked why I feel lucky to have escaped from JobPath. In the early 2000s, what was primarily offered to me were community employment, CE, schemes because that was a big thing then. I actually did a CE scheme. I signed up because it was really great. I got money, a bit of an allowance and could keep my rent allowance and lone parent support. I felt rich doing it so there was no incentive for me to upskill. It was more about how I could get by day to day. I did not stay in that very long because when they started to tell me I needed to learn something I was not interested in, I left. I am still good friends with some of the girls I was in that scheme with and they have gone on to do more CE schemes. People can apply again to do a second one and extend it. It is a kind of trap because there is no destination at the end. The analysis of the outcome for CE schemes shows that 15% of people move from them into employment. That does not mean they are not meaningful. They can be meaningful but there needs to be work done on supporting people beyond the schemes and providing guidance on where they can go and what they can be. It should not be seen as a failure if people do not become employed full time straight afterwards. They could move into further education and extend it.

If I had stayed in that area I would probably have ended up with a lot of level 3 and level 4 qualifications and I might have ended up working in the local shop. I have nothing against that. If I was succeeding really well, I would have ended up working in the community sector which is very beneficial but it has limits. The alternative is that I am thinking things I never thought were possible and I am living a life way beyond anything I could have imagined. I own my own home, I pay taxes and I am happily married. I am no longer a statistic. Sometimes the structure of these schemes means that a person is still in that circle and there is no guidance or way out.

The Deputy talked about lone parents and the challenges they face. It is like a broken record we talk about child care costs. To go to college, I had to find £200 a week for my son to be cared for. I got an allowance of €75. I was supported by the St. Vincent de Paul and the Dublin Port Company scholarship, which are individual agencies external to the Government. I am not an anomaly.

There are lone parent women and men, but particularly women, who see that challenge and that cost, and they are completely cut off. Child care is a major issue. There is also the point that if a person goes to higher education as a lone parent, he or she is not allowed the same child care benefits as if that person went to further education or a community employment place. The person has more child care support for a lower qualification than for a higher qualification, which seems unfair. In addition, the new child care scheme, which I herald and which I think is fantastic, depends on where the person is living and the crèches or nurseries that are available. It also does not talk to a woman who has a ten year old, a seven year old and a three year old. Last year I raised money to support lone parents who put their children in camp for a week while they were in college because there is no one to mind the children during the summer holidays. There was a lone parent who was in Trinity and who had five children under the age of 14. I wondered how this woman managed it and thought what an amazing person she was to be battling through.

The challenge is child care but it is not only child care. The lone parent is in a trap of poverty and that poverty is not just financial and is sometimes a poverty of mind. I am not criticising because I was that person, but we do not see anyone who escapes. For the odd few we see escaping, like myself, Senator Ruane and some others, we think they are too distant and that something happened to them. There are no role models who are heralded and people are taught to be ashamed of their status in some way.

I am on the board of the charity, One Family. It is the least likely to be funded and it finds it very hard to get donations. Lone parents in particular are seen to be responsible for where they are. It is as if the break-up of their family is something to do with them and, therefore, their poverty is something to do with them. I could go on for ages on that.

On the suggestions for young people, one of the experiences I have seen in young people who get the qualifications is that they do not have exposure to specific jobs and they are only exposed to certain jobs. We have been limited for a long time in terms of jobs availability. There is no path into higher professions for young people who may be coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. We have specific institutions that are linked with schools that run pathways to law or to specific professions, but there is no targeted Government programme where we tell people where they can go. Each school is tasked with that itself, so young people who have the potential to move beyond where they are currently do not know how, and guidance counselling in schools is limited and not supported.

My suggestion is that part of the activation process would be individualised guidance and support around where people can go and what they want to be, and then to have paths created for them. While that costs a lot and is very individual, what we are doing right now is not necessarily working. Even though unemployment is reducing, we are still not seeing mobility and the same people are staying in the lower levels of jobs.