Dan Boyle (Cork South Central, Green Party)

The Minister might think the Opposition ungracious in not acknowledging his partial retraction of the qualifying criteria for the back to education scheme. In reality, the Minister has merely engaged in a J-turn as he has not even gone the full distance of a U-turn. The criticism from these benches was also made outside this House at a recent seminar by the One Family group. The policy officer of that organisation was quite clear that it was relatively indifferent whether women in one-parent families had to wait in poverty for 12 months or six months to access the one route out of poverty many of them have, namely, accessing a back to education course. The Minister might bear that in mind when revisiting and reviewing the criteria.

The Minister, his predecessor and his Department put in place an unnecessary barrier as part of their intransigence on the issue of child dependant allowances. The argument made more by the Minister's officials than anyone else is that the effects of child dependant allowances are better achieved through large increases in child benefit such as those made in recent years. However, the child dependant allowance was intended to recognise that children in these circumstances had additional needs which the universal child benefit payment could not meet. If the Minister and his officials are not prepared to accept that reality, I take with a pinch of salt his recent statements that he is prepared to examine this issue in terms of how the role of families and the lot of one-parent families are defined. The Minister needs to focus on this. I would like him to devote more resources to this area to justify the statements he has made recently. Unfortunately, they are not provided in the legislation but the Minister should seek to attain these goals in his remaining two years in office.

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