Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Fine. I will say two things. It is a fact that the birth rate is down this year on last year, so both maternity and paternity payments are down. Paternity leave is a new scheme. Given that in most, though not all, houses the man earns more than the woman, a work-in-progress issue that we will have to address over the coming years, taking paternity leave has a cost implication for certain families and that is why some men are not taking it up. A tremendous number of men are, however, and a total of 46,800 paternity benefits were paid up until the end of July 2018. We advertised the campaign last year and the year before and we will re-advertise it this year because the Senator is right in saying that not everyone knows of everything that is available to them on the back of their social insurance contributions. We need to continue to recognise and support men to stay home with their children during the first 12 months of those children's lives, and the only way we can do that is to try to extol to them the benefits of doing so. Every woman knows this and 46,800 men know this too. We need to keep going until we reach an equal rate, within a few percentage points, of people taking maternity and paternity leave. Rates of maternity leave are at about 70% uptake and very few women in the country do not take it. We need to achieve equality over sexism and we will keep working towards this.

I am very pleased to hear Senator Nash talk about the Low Pay Commission in such positive terms and he is obviously back in favour of the commission's recommendations. The increase in low pay last year did cause a step effect, which we addressed in last year's budget. I anticipate that we will do the same in this year's budget, negotiations notwithstanding. It would be nice, however, if we had parity and if we did not have to pick and choose which of the commission's recommendations to accept.

The Senator raised the issue of lone parents. We spend a lot of time at this committee talking about supports for lone parents and about the struggles they face because of being alone and because of the stigma surrounding mothers raising their children alone. This is a matter of which I am particularly conscious and that I am especially keen to address. Not only did I start last year to reverse the cuts that were by made by the Senator's colleague, Deputy Burton, in 2012, and I very much anticipate that we will continue to do so over the next few years until the reversion of those cuts is complete, but I am also adamant that the historical stigma and misogyny surrounding this issue in society will continue to be broken down by people like the Senator and me and by others at this committee. Such stigma is diminishing but not quickly enough. If we do not break it down, then we will do a huge disservice to the new types of family that are not yet recognised in our Constitution but which it is hoped will be in the very near future. It is difficult to raise children on one's own and it is doubly difficult when one has to deal with the stigma still attached to single parents in this country.

Like others around this table, I will do as much as I can to ensure that this stigma is diminished, not just through policy but also through walking the walk as well as talking the talk when it comes to what is required to assist women, in particular, in lone parent families to make sure that they get the education, support, childcare and housing that they require and that should be acceded to by this State. This is so that they can find decent careers for the rest of their lives rather than having to work in a low pay sector, which is what we seem to have accepted over recent years as being the best that they can get.

I do not know if Senator Nash was here when Senator Butler raised the possibility of a campaign to make people aware of their social insurance entitlements. This would be a good idea.

Whenever I come before this committee, particularly to address either Revised Estimates or budget conversations, I always open my speech with a reminder to the members of how big a spend the Department has and what it is that we spend it on. I do not even need to tell the members this as they already know. They can be sure, however, that there is a view in society that the vast bulk of the money spent by the Department goes to jobseekers and those who are unemployed. This is far from the truth. It would be valuable for us to recognise and to inform people of the solidarity that we extend on their behalf to citizens at various stages of their lives. The numbers of unemployed are dropping drastically, so the budget for them is dropping drastically too and is nowhere close to where people's expectations might be. When people hear that we have a budget of €20 million, they think that the vast bulk of that is spent on jobseekers, and this is a stigma and a white elephant that also needs to be broken down. I take Senator Nash's point on board and I will consider very carefully how we could best impart that information in the most cost-effective way.