Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

Some good progress was made when the limit was raised to €400 in the budget and this is in line with the document. The tests will be carried out in both an urban and a rural setting and they will be conducted by the Department of Social and Family Affairs with the co-operation of FÁS, the Office of the Minister for Children and the Department of Education and Science. The test will aim to target on a voluntary basis all new recipients of the one-parent family payment and qualified adult in the test area. The test is to focus on identifying and resolving the practical and administrative issues that may arise in advance of the new scheme being introduced. These include customer profiling, case management, IT development, data storage, interdepartmental agency linkages and outcome monitoring. Child care and other similar policy issues must also be taken into account by the group. Although take-up is likely to be low due to the necessary voluntary nature of the test, it will allow for operational and logistical co-ordination to be considered and developed.

The Deputy has expressed to me many times his concern that in any reforms, new poverty traps are not created and the implementation group will consider that carefully. Lone parents are not a homogeneous group; it includes widows and other people. Care must be taken not to create another problem when tackling this problem. The paper has been published and the Government has made it available for discussion. Some of its issues are controversial such as the activation issues which have yet to be decided. A five-year transition period is proposed. We can now move away from the lone parent's allowance to a fairer family-friendly allowance based on children who live in low income families as opposed to the marital or other status of the family.

See this speech in context