David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)

That is the beauty of it. I am not sure if it sells any more newspapers.

On 27 March 2005, the Minister indicated in one newspaper that he would like to move to a system that would replace the lone parent allowance with the more family friendly child benefit. In April, he stated in another newspaper that officials were still examining plans to replace the lone parent allowance with a more family friendly child benefit scheme, which would ease the transition from welfare to work to education. He stated that a range of options was being studied by a high level group of officials from a number of Departments who would report to him in a number of months. He also stated that the system would end where extra benefits are paid on the basis that a parent is living alone at all times. A number of similar statements were made to the newspapers.

The number of one parent family recipients being paid by the Department at 30 September 2005 was 79,937. The Department records indicated that approximately 9,600 one parent family payment recipients are in receipt of maintenance from their spouses and so on. Spouses, usually women, are being told by officials that they must take their former partners to court to get maintenance. It is very stressful to do that, especially if the relationship has broken down and they do not want any contact with each other. I ask the Minister to look into that practice. Does he agree with it or does he think it should be disallowed? Let us suppose that someone reneges on a payment. It is left to the spouse, usually a women with children who is under much stress, to try to get the money back and deal with it. There is an inconsistency with the way things are working in that area. I do not know how it can be tackled, but it needs to be done because it is causing stress for people. The Minister spoke about moving to a different system. In his speech, he mentioned that something will happen, but when will it happen? He has been talking about this for quite a while. Since he came into office, we have been raising the issue. Now is the time for action on it.

We have had no increase in the child dependant allowance and the special payment mentioned by the Minister has not come about. People on social welfare payments who are really struggling would have benefited from an increase in the CDA. There has been no move since 1992, but we have many children living in poverty.

I noted from the budget speech that the €1,000 per year payment for child care is not in anyway linked to quality. The local child care committee must be notified that someone is minding children and that is it. The function of the local child care committee is not to act as an inspectorate of any sort, just to act as an support co-ordinating group. The committee does not have the resources or the function to act otherwise. I am concerned that, at some stage, a scandal will occur where a child is minded by someone who is not capable, not qualified and should not be in charge of children. It is an issue we must take on board. In other countries, child minders are vetted for their qualifications. A scandal is waiting to happen and we will be asked why we did not put in place some form of screening for child minders. There are many people in the grey economy minding children.

The Minister for Finance also announced an income disregard of €10,000 per annum for a child minder caring for up to three children in her own home. However, if she earns one cent more than that, she is taxed on the lot. If we do the maths, we will find that she will probably mind only one child. The costs are almost €200 per week. The grey economy will continue or people will declare the €10,000 and leave the rest in the grey economy. I would have preferred to see a €10,000 income disregard, with anything over that being taxed. We should leave the €10,000 untaxed to act as an incentive.

There is an extraordinary problem with child care, which is costing a fortune. It comes back to this Bill. People on low incomes are paying the same amount of money as those on higher incomes when there are no community crèches. That causes a huge strain on parents. It acts as a disincentive to going out to work as they cannot get quality child care. A cost of over €150 per week is a massive amount of money for people. The current proposals by the Minister for Finance in this area are a huge disincentive. The Minister for Social and Family Affairs is an accountant and he knows what is involved.

No part of the child care package is linked to quality. There was no thinking about setting up a preschool system, even though it is badly needed. Most progressive European countries have a universal preschool system. The lack of such a system impacts enormously on the Department of Social and Family Affairs because people on low incomes are hit harder than anybody else in trying to cope and pay for child care. Fine Gael brought forward a document which would provide a voucher system that people could use to access registered quality child minders. The whole emphasis was to encourage people to register, to raise the standards and to move people out of the grey economy. When full-time child minders reach retirement age, how are they fixed for pensions? They do not have any. What happens if they get sick? What happens if they have children? We need to raise the quality. This Mickey Mouse measure was an easy thing to do, but it did not tackle the issue. In my view, it was a missed opportunity.

I welcome the increases provided for under the Social Welfare Bill. They are badly needed. We know the pressures that people are under and we know the costs that they have to endure, especially those with small children. At the same time, we need a strategy.

I welcome the increases for carers, but we need a family carers' strategy. Carers, I am told, save the Exchequer about €2 billion a year. If the Exchequer were to pay for the work some 150,000 carers do, it would cost that much. Very often it is 24 hours work, seven days a week. The social welfare measures in the budget have gone some way, but we need to go beyond that. We need to start putting structures together to eliminate poverty altogether, as I said at the start. Measures need to be targeted specifically at families with small children who are suffering in silence and who are poor. Such children are dropping out of school and this is adding to the cycle. They drop out and then they are gone. They cannot ultimately get high paid employment. We know the economy is moving more towards high skill employment and people with low skills are being left behind. That will continue as the years go on. Even people with high skills will be under pressure. In India and China, for instance, today the trend is towards high skill, low pay and that is a major challenge for Ireland. We must stay awake and make sure we are not left behind in that area.

As regards the second tier child benefit, the Minister said last June he hoped some of the new measures would be contained in the budget and would go further towards addressing the blemish of child poverty. I do not believe they have gone far enough. Money for child care is for child care and money for child benefit is for child benefit and they are two separate issues. They can be blended together and it may be argued that it is a large amount of money. However, child care should be ringfenced for this purpose. People should realise that so much is for child benefit and so much is for child care. Child benefit is for food, clothes, shoes, toys and all the rest. In this day and age people's expectations are high. A woman told me this evening about her eight year old child who has many friends in school, and they have birthday parties. Every time the woman hears of a birthday party she knows that another €20 is gone towards the child who is having the birthday. Then that child must be invited back and there is a widening circle of people involved. However, these are the times we live in and children cannot be deprived of that type of experience, though it is expensive.

I welcome most of what is in the Bill. It would be foolish not to, because the increases are good. More needs to be done, however, as regards structures. I mentioned a number of issues that the Minister should address in the time he has left. We are moving closer to an election. Perhaps in the summer or in the next Social Welfare Bill he might deal with some of those issues.

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