Ms Louise Bayliss:

I thank the Senator for the questions. First, child maintenance is hugely problematic area. Ireland is one of the few countries that does not have a child maintenance system. This impacts on child poverty. Coupled with that is how child maintenance is assessed. There is no point in having a child maintenance system if the Department of Social Protection assesses it as means to reduce its social welfare bill, rather than directing the maintenance to the child. That is hugely problematic. In this country, it is even worse in than most of the countries with statutory systems. As the Senator will be aware, once there is a court order in place for maintenance to be paid, the Department of Social Protection will deduct that from a social welfare payment, whether it is paid or not. That is a huge barrier to young parents who are looking for maintenance in the courts. The second barrier to looking for maintenance is that there is no enforcement of payments. It is up to the lone parent to go backwards and forwards to court in that regard, which is demoralising and humiliating.

Linked to that was the Senator’s question about supports where a second parent is not present, either through detention or death. In current circumstances, two incomes are needed to sustain a child. When a couple are not together, there is an obligation on the other parent pay maintenance. Unfortunately, we do not enforce this in Ireland. In the case of death or detention, there is no other parent to pay it. There need to be additional supports in place in order to ensure that every child has that benefit. It is the key way of lifting children out of poverty, as I said, once the social welfare rules focus around them.

The Senator’s final question, which is relevant, was about why we support part-time work for lone parents and acknowledge their care responsibilities, but do not do it for higher education. I would like my colleague, Ms Smith, to speak about that. She has lived experience of this because she is going through it at the moment.