Pádraic McCormack (Galway West, Fine Gael)

The essence of this amendment is simple and I am sure the Minister will accept it. It merely asks to bring before the Dáil the report on the impact of the social welfare system on one-parent families, and on the proposal to remove the restriction on the formation of family units which applies to recipients of such payments.

We cannot stress enough the importance of the family unit. As Deputy Ryan noted, that unit is quite different from what we envisaged when many of us married 20 or 30 years ago. Family units now are quite different. We know this from the people coming to our constituencies. Will the Minister bring forward legislation to allow both parents to live with their children because, currently, many single mothers are financially discouraged and disadvantaged by having the father of their children living with them? Will the Minister expand on his recent statement that he would examine the one-parent family situation and the benefits children get from having two parents in the home instead of one? That is the crux of much of the difficulty with single parents or with children born to a single parent.

We know from our office and constituency work that in some cases a blind eye is turned to situations where single parents have partners living with them and the situations are denied or ignored. If the Minister agrees with the amendment, which I think he does, when be brings to the Oireachtas the report on single parents and family units, perhaps he might expand on his recent statement which he subsequently left hanging. There was no follow-up on what he would do to help the situation whereby families could, within the social welfare rules or whatever situation obtained, have two parents instead of one, something from which children and families would benefit greatly. The Minister might expand on this in his reply because we must deal with the reality of the situation rather than what we might like it to be, especially in light of the statistics given by Deputies Penrose, Seán Ryan and Ring regarding the numbers of children now being born out of wedlock.

The Minister might also expand on his earlier statement in this regard and say what he proposes to do. If he cannot do so now and he accepts the amendment, when he brings the report before the Houses of the Oireachtas within six months, perhaps he might have found a solution which Deputies on all sides of the House could support. That solution might allow children to benefit from having two parents living with them instead of one.

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