Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact that the Minister has addressed the issue of child poverty and how to alleviate it. She mentioned that throwing extra money at it would not suffice. While that would not fix it, it would go a long way to solving the issue. I welcome comments made by my colleague, Deputy O'Dea, on giving every support to parents, especially in respect of education, and ensuring that grants for parents in part-time education are available and that parents are fully supported in that endeavour. It is very important that young single mothers, in particular, have all the flexibility they need when caring for their children. I attended the National Women's Council budget meeting this morning. They highlighted the need to fully restore the income disregards when it comes to having a part-time job. The Minister touched on it today but we need to go further and fully restore them. The only way we are going to resolve the issue of child poverty is by empowering children, putting supports in place for parents and children and ensuring that their housing needs are catered for. We need to do a lot more than what we are doing at the moment. We need to go that extra mile. We need radical proposals. There should be no need in a modern democracy and a small country for any child to be living in poverty.

We are going to see a lot more fuel poverty when we go into the colder months. Deputy Brady advocated an increase in the fuel allowance. This time last year, I suggested increasing the income threshold for the fuel allowance. Once someone is in receipt of the fuel allowance, there are many ancillary benefits he or she can get, especially for elderly people, including having a house insulated. As we know, many incomes are remaining the same while the cost of living is dramatically increasing year by year. I welcome that we will be keeping the Christmas bonus, as do all my colleagues.

On the general gender pension inequality and backdating the homemakers disregard to the time of the marriage bar, I know it is costly at about €290 million. Has the Minister given any more thought to that? My colleague, Deputy O'Dea, welcomed the assessment times for carers allowance, jobseekers allowance and disability allowance. I am glad to see they are reducing. We still need to ensure that the timeframe is reduced further. When somebody is applying for carers allowance, it is generally done in a hurry when a loved one is acutely sick and when it is necessary for the person involved to take time off work. We have to support people in this time of need and not have them waiting for their applications to be processed when they are going through such personal turmoil with parents or relatives in hospital and while they are trying to deal with a sick person's physical needs.

I wish to raise the status of the pension auto-enrolment scheme. Those who are self-employed do not receive any illness benefit at the moment. What are the Minister's thoughts on introducing an illness benefit for them?