Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank everyone for making a presentation. I will not go through all the names as that takes too long. Anybody who has spoken agrees that we must make work pay. The reality is that nobody will go back to work if they are not going to be better off than if they stay at home. There are great difficulties for single parents in particular being able to access child care.

I am a firm believer that education pays. When one educates a person, it puts them into a position where they are not dependent on the State and they can move on in their lives as well, and so can their children.

My question is to Mr. Egan and Mr. McKeon. There seems to be a very low uptake of the after-school child care, ASCC, scheme. Only 172 parents are availing of the scheme, which supports 236 children. Why is the uptake so low? Is it simply to do with spreading the news about the scheme or is it about getting single parents to understand the reason for the scheme?

I have been studying this area, including single parents. I am sorry for referring to single parents, lone parents and one parent; we are all parents whether we like it or not. I made the observation that in respect of a lone parent with two children who is returning to education, if their weekly allowance, the back to education allowance and their children's allowance is averaged out, the figure is about €1,500 a month. That is more than €359 a week. That is a substantial amount of money, leaving aside bills and so on. I have gone through this in great detail and found that after every bill is paid there is a surplus of €80 a week. Can Mr. McKeon explain why we are not promoting the back to education allowance more strongly and getting more young people, particularly single parents, back into the workforce? I understand the child care problem in terms of looking after children, but what are we doing actively to promote this allowance, which I believe is the key to this question? These people are trying to rear their children on their own but they want to avail of this service and get back into education. The money is available; the statistics show that. "Profitable" is not a good word to use but it is worthwhile for these people to go back into education because the system allows it. The down side of it is the child care issue. We all know that without the support of families, friends and neighbours, many people would not be able to get back into the system. What is the percentage uptake of the back to education scheme, particularly among lone parents? How is it being promoted? We spoke about the Intreo offices. I agree with Mr. Egan that they are doing a great job on the ground-----