Willie Penrose (Westmeath, Labour)

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 5, between lines 14 and 15, to insert the following:

"1.—The Minister shall within 6 months from after the passing of this Act prepare and lay before both Houses of the Oireachtas a report on the impact of the social welfare system on one parent families and on proposals to remove the restriction on formation of a family unit which presently applies to recipients of such payments, and to alleviate the requirement that income disregard be assessed by reference to any particular week rather than averaged over a year or other period.".

This is a very important matter. Over recent weeks, the quoting of figures has gone out of control, particularly those relating to the number of young women who are drawn into the perils of early and unmarried motherhood, according to someone's apology on 10 February. However, those figures are totally false. The total number of lone-parent households in Ireland has remained a fairly constant percentage of total households in the past six years. They comprised 11.2% of private households in 1996 and 11.6% in 2002. A sizeable proportion of lone-parent households are headed by a man rather than a woman. Therefore, nearly one sixth of lone-parent households are headed by men. The total number of births to women under the age of 20, whether lone parents, has remained fairly constant over the past 30 years at approximately 3,000 per year.

The Minister will agree that, according to the recent CSO figures, the actual numbers and percentage of births to this group has fallen from 5.35% in 2001 to 4.55% in 2003. The age profile of women in receipt of lone parent allowance for 2002 shows that only 3.2% of them are under 20 years, while the majority, 51.4%, are aged between 30 and 59. In this context, the report by Camille Loftus entitled One Size Fits All? — The Irish Government's Failed Approach to One Parent Families 1994-2004, published by the One Parent Exchange Network, OPEN, is compulsory reading. I urge the Minister to ensure that it is mandatory reading for every official in his Department who deals with this topic. It is one of the best surveys or overviews of the issue and makes invaluable suggestions.

The Minister needs to do more than commission another report and suggest reform. I agree with Deputy Ring in that reform should include modernisation by, for example, making a woman equal to a man in terms of abolishing the age old qualified adult allowance, giving her 100% of the allowance and treating her as an equal, which would provide a boost of approximately €45. However, the minute one hears the Minister refer to reform, one must walk away because it is generally a nice way of referring to cutbacks. Nevertheless, I support positive reform which modernises and takes cognisance of the realities of the new millennium.

The Walsh-Myers scenario of an explosion of teenage births in recent years is absolutely false and has no basis. Few people choose to be lone parents since lone parenthood can arise through death, divorce, desertion, separation, imprisonment of a partner or through an unplanned pregnancy. Whatever the cause, it is usually a very traumatic event for both the lone parent and the affected children. The initial stages of adaptation to lone parenthood can be very difficult as can the long-term prospects for parents and children.

Some 51% of lone parents are aged between 30 and 59 years and only 3.2% are under 20 years. There is evidence internationally and in Ireland that lone parents are at high risk of persistent poverty. Employment for lone parents in Ireland is low, as it is in England, Germany and the Netherlands. However, the key to raising lone parents out of the poverty to which their family circumstances often condemn them is to facilitate their move into work. This transition is what is dealt with by this amendment.

It is difficult for a lone parent to take up work. Children must be cared for and there is no second parent to share that responsibility. Work must be found which facilitates such requirements as when children need to be taken to and collected from school. Moreover, many lone parents might not have sufficient educational qualifications for many jobs and, therefore, find only relatively low-paid insecure employment. For many lone parents work will be impossible without having child care. For low wage earners generally as well as lone parents, the cost of child care can take up to the whole of an income earned and leave those low income and lone parent families no better off than when the parent was not working.

In 1996 the lone parent family payment was an innovative provision which allowed lone parents to work and earn up to €146.50 per week without losing any of their allowances. This graduated to €293 per week before social welfare payments were lost. A 12-month transition was available which was cut to six months by one of the "savage 16" cuts. The current position is that there is a six-month transition period, which represents half the "savage 16" measure.

The kernel of this amendment is that the thresholds were never increased from the 1996 eligibility barrier, with the result that lone parents can lose all State payments before they can even earn enough to cover Ireland's extremely high child care costs. Therefore, the incentives aimed at trying to get people out to work collapses because they lose their benefits. Whatever people earn in additional income is consumed by child care costs. This applies not just to lone parents but across the spectrum of many low-income employees.

The 2001 report of the National Economic and Social Forum, as well as Camille Loftus's 2004 report, highlight the fact that many employment supports, educational and training issues and employment schemes available are aimed at the unemployed in general and do not take into account the special needs of one parent families. It is often a highly complicated exercise to calculate whether an individual lone parent would gain or lose financially by availing of them. There is a lack of information available to lone parents about the social welfare system, with little attempt to explain what lone parents' rights are, which reflects Deputy Ring's point about people not knowing to what they are entitled. It is time to simplify the system.

In regard to child care, it is worth noting that the problems experienced by lone parents echo the experience of all the groups on social welfare and prove the need to simplify the whole system. I disagreed with the propositions at the centre of the recent press furore, which I set out in my Second Stage speech. The controversy gives us the initiative to reform these payments in a positive manner to facilitate the transition to work and to education.

This is why the abolition of the back to education allowance was an absolute disaster, although we cannot visit it upon the Minister. We must be honest. If we are not, we should not be in this House. The barriers to self-sufficiency for single parents was made worse by the "savage 16" cuts which were tinkered with in the most recent Finance Bill but not reversed. The abolition of the crèche supplement which allowed single parents the opportunity to take up education and training opportunities is another problem, as are the cutbacks in the back to education scheme, which represented another important avenue or opportunity. The eligible period was brought back from 15 to 12 months, although it had been six months. The excuse was that there had been a great deal of abuse of the system. However, I never saw this abuse. If there is abuse, the people responsible should be curtailed rather than bringing a sledge-hammer to crack a nut and killing the scheme so that it is no good to anyone.

Deputies Boyle and Finian McGrath will give examples of people who fall within an 11-month timeframe, but the Minister has set the regulation at 12 months. We want to bring it back to a minimum of nine, although it should be brought back to six months. For the sake of €1.5 million or €2 million, one could open up an avenue which would be very positive for lone parents as well as other groups. Further difficulties are caused by the restrictions in regard to entitlement to one parent family payment for those who are in employment on modest earnings as well as the rent allowance restrictions.

The €317.43 limit, formerly £250, which was set nine years ago, restricts the ability of lone parents and other low income families in private rented housing to improve their situation by taking up work. This means that a lone parent with two children on a community employment scheme, which has also been emasculated, would forego his or her rent allowance. I am sure Deputy Finian McGrath will speak with greater authority than | about the conclusions of the Vincentian Partnership's research. It concluded that the community employment scheme earnings meant the difference for most lone parent families on the scheme between buying fresh vegetables and yoghurt for their children and less nutritious food or between getting into debt on day-to-day living or not. These restrictions help to keep lone parents in poverty. It is high time the €317.43 limit was raised in line with the growth in average earnings since 1996 when the limit was set.

I wish to make a final point, although I believe the Minister took it on board. He has an agile brain and I hope his officials are keeping pace with him because sometimes he is able to sidestep me, which he would not have done at one time because I would have given him a good shoulder. The point I wish to discuss is the capital disregard in the means test for the one-parent family payment. I will take the example of a lone parent with a 12 or 13 year old child. She got the opportunity of a postal job with periodic casual payments. It pays approximately €350 per week or €400 per week with overtime. There are about ten weeks' work over the year, which means earnings of approximately €4,000. This would give the parent an opportunity to provide a better environment for the child. Perhaps there would be more clothes, more opportunities to go places, extra tuition or even a holiday, which most people take for granted.

However, as a result of the lone parent's income being over €293 for four weeks, she must go out of the system and get half her payment for those four weeks. That takes ages; she will be back in the system again by the time the half payment is paid. She might go out of the system again in the summer, go back into it afterwards and then leave it again over Christmas. The €146 multiplied by 52 is €7,500 to €8,000. The income should be calculated on a bulk or aggregate rather than a weekly basis. In that way, the young lone parent can take up the employment and improve her lot while retaining the one-parent payment.

That is preferable to yo-yo bureaucracy where one is in and out of the system. It involves a plethora of letters and, as Deputy Ring said, going to various places to find out one's entitlements and then returning again. It is a yo-yo, up and down system. Deputies table parliamentary questions on behalf of the person, which costs a fortune. A parliamentary question probably costs €250 to answer. It would be better to leave the person concerned with her lone parent's money which will only cost €150 to €160. It is tomfoolery economics.

This should be put on an aggregate basis. It should be based on the person not exceeding €7,500 on a per annum basis. That sum is roughly equivalent to €146.50 multiplied by 52.

See this speech in context