Dr. Tricia Keilthy:

I thank Deputy Cairns for her question. As regards the cliff edge, I will add to what Ms Kelly outlined. In the case of the jobseeker's transitional payment, once the youngest child reaches the age of 14 years, a recipient must either switch to the working family payment or move to jobseeker's allowance. That means that a lone parent who is working full-time will lose €53 per week simply because the youngest child has turned 14 years old. The parent cannot take up any more hours because he or she is already working full-time, so there is no way for the parent to increase his or her income. The parent is left with this loss of income at a time when he or she has a teenager. Raising teenagers is more expensive in terms of the costs to households. They are still in school and the parent still has all the care and responsibility. Extending it until the end of secondary school would mean that the cliff edge at that point is removed. The children are then over the age of 18 years and perhaps going into college. They can then move onto other payments at that point, where there is an opportunity maybe to engage with training and there is still income support.

Lone parents need the social protection system to recognise their additional caring responsibilities, and they need to be treated differently because of that. That is very important. This is a legacy of the drastic cuts and changes to the one-parent family payment that took place from 2014 onwards. Many of them have been rolled back and we have seen improvements in the living standards of some lone parents, but there are still critical and entrenched issues in terms of how the social protection system and in-work supports are designed for lone parents. It is a very complex system, so streamlining it would be very effective in supporting lone parents throughout their children's lives.

To add to what Ms Kelly said about benchmarking, it is about using evidence to drive how our social welfare system is set. At present, it is arbitrary and totally inadequate. There is still a gap of €82 between a social welcome income for a lone parent with two children and the cost of a minimum essential standard of living. That is why we have issues related to food poverty and that is why families are cutting back and going into debt. Having a system that is adequately benchmarked and that provides a standard of living for everyone in society, a standard below which nobody is expected to live, would be a progressive and important step in tackling child poverty. It is not cheap to do and it would require changes over a number of budgets. However, as shown in the research we highlighted regarding the cost of poverty to the State every year, it is significantly less than that so it is definitely money well spent in terms of preventing the damaging impacts of poverty on people's lives.

Childcare is fundamentally critical to ensuring that families can get out of poverty and that they have options and choices. At the same time, we must ensure that people who cannot work because they are caring for children with additional needs or a disability have an income that they can live on with dignity. That is why recognising the cost of disability and the full implementation of the recently published Indecon report are also critical to ensure those extra costs are supported through our social welfare system.