Willie Penrose (Westmeath, Labour)

I am glad we initiated this debate because the total number of lone parent households has remained at a constant percentage over the past six years. It was 11.2% in 1996 and 11.6% in 2002. A sizeable proportion of lone parent households, about 15%, are headed by men but 85% are headed by women.

I agree with the Minister. The total number of births to women under 20, regardless of whether they are lone parents, has remained fairly constant over the past 30 years at about 3,000. Over the past few years both the actual numbers and percentage of births to this 20 year old age group has fallen, from about 5.35% in 2001 to 4.55% in 2003. The majority of lone parents, therefore, 51.4%, are between the 30 and 59 age cohort.

We must develop the debate on this area and examine in a wider context the way women are treated generally in the social welfare code. The social welfare system was developed in 1952, a time when males were the main breadwinners. At that time, women stayed at home and it was considered socially acceptable to deal with them only as their husband's dependants.

It is time that a new model of social welfare is examined and rooted in the social insurance principles of benefits as of right while acknowledging the complexity of women's lives. We have a Constitution which pays lip service to women who had to stay at home, bring children into the world and look after them, yet we never acknowledged the contribution of those women. Their contribution should not be measured just in terms of paid work but also through the care those women gave to children and the elderly. We must recognise that concept. There is little point in having a Constitution that pays lip service to the role of women in terms of bringing children into the world and rearing them if we then ignore them when it comes to addressing their social welfare entitlements. Only when we treat women equally in the social welfare code and get rid of the qualified adult dependant allowance, where they get 70% of the original payment, will we get equality. What was acceptable in a male dominated society in the 1950s is no longer acceptable in this age of equality in 2005. In initiating this debate we should try to develop and formulate a positive policy in that regard.

This will not be easy. There are legal matters which have to be examined in respect of one-parent families, cohabitation and so on. I have had correspondence from people who are married with two children and so on. I was the eldest of ten children. My father had not much of a wage in the county council but he got tax free allowance for each child and because there were ten of us it meant that he never paid tax. The county council's wages were a miserable sum. The staff only got paid every fortnight and we would be looking out the window on a Saturday morning for the postman.

I know all about the Murphy decision in 1981, but the Murphy decision will be revisited in the context of the social welfare reforms we all want to initiate. We should ensure, however, that in bringing in a measure that is positive in one area we do not create disadvantage in terms of the marital situation. That will be a real test of how we progress.

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