Mr. Niall Egan:

As for the point raised by Deputy Joan Collins on precarious employment, this is an issue. A higher percentage of lone parents have a tendency to be in precarious employment and I note the recent coverage of child care being an area in which there are highly-skilled jobs with low pay. While this is an issue, it is why the jobseeker's transition payment gives these parents the opportunity, for the first time ever in the State and we should have been doing this a long time ago, to engage with the Department and for the Department to give them a helping support to improve their education and training attainment in the hope that they can get a better job. As for the liable relatives issue, the Department is aware of it. It is not currently under the jobseeker's legislation but is something we will be considering in the future.

I do not have statistics for Senator Moloney on maintenance but I can certainly look into this and revert to her.

With regard to child care, as I stated, the key measure to be addressed first is the jobseeker's allowance transition payment. It largely negates the need for a lot of child care provision. Someone with a young child can qualify for the FIS and still not require child care provision because FIS involves 19 hours, which works out at just under four hours per day. Admittedly, this is not possible in all circumstances but it is possible for a lone parent with a child in school to match what is required.

I said at the start that child care is a considerable issue. The country has struggled with it and it has been the subject of much attention in recent weeks and months. The Department is working with the Department of Children and Youth Affairs on this and we have done our best in this regard to introduce new schemes, including the after-school child care scheme and the CE child care scheme. There are approximately 40,000 subsidised child care places for low-income parents. Therefore, there is provision. Is this how it should be? The matter is complex, as Mr. Duffin has said. The system is not perfect and needs to be addressed; there is no doubt about that. As I stated, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs will be examining this through its new group. We will be feeding into that process.

With regard to Deputy Byrne's specific question on after-school child care and the low take-up, a number of issues are at play. One involves the complexity of the scheme when first launched. We have made changes in that regard and streamlined the scheme. We have focused considerably on promoting it through local offices but the Department of Children and Youth Affairs is actually responsible for promoting it and does so through the county child care committees. That is a key issue.

The regional spread is also an issue. However, it should be noted that while there are plenty of places in certain parts of the country, the take-up remains low. We must investigate this. We have already said we will carry out a survey of the participants and those who inquired about but did not take up a place. We will feed our findings into the work of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs' group on child care.