Willie Penrose (Westmeath, Labour)

I thank the Minister for his reply. I also thank my colleagues for their comprehensive contributions on this matter. It indicates that people are acutely aware that the debate on poverty is not over by a long shot. The Minister rightly identified that in some cases people who take up low paid jobs find it more difficult to survive. Much of the poverty to which the Minister referred in regard to children — whether there are 60,000 or 120,000 depends on the measure used — relates to such an environment.

The interface between part-time work and social welfare needs to be reviewed. I have a strong view on that matter. We are all in favour of promoting gender equality. If that is the case, women and men should have equal access to work and employment opportunities. Increasing women's participation in employment is also a key policy in alleviating child poverty. Many women have a very different social and labour market experience to men. We need to modernise the social welfare system to make it more friendly towards women.

More than 130,000 women are considered as qualified adults in social welfare terms in the sense that their spouses receive social welfare payments for them that are worth only 70% of a full adult payment. These women, who comprise 98% of qualified adults, are not only denied independent access to money but are also invisible in the labour market. It is not worthwhile for them to sign on and register as unemployed because of the limitation rule that a family cannot claim two unemployment assistance payments and can only claim for one adult and a qualified adult. Not only does this leave them poorer by about €45 a week, it also means that the qualified adult is not directly eligible for labour market or FÁS and education programmes. This is where the issue becomes jammed up. This is the route to poverty. If we can tackle this, we will get to the root of the problem. It is time to modernise the social welfare system to acknowledge that, for the most part, it is women who are in that position although there are also some men.

We developed the social welfare system in 1952 when things were different. In general, men were the breadwinners and women were recognised under the Constitution in that we paid lip-service to the tremendous work they did bringing up families and staying at home to do great work.

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