Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

In fairness, I have. There are a number of stakeholders involved in the social and family affairs area. The delivery of policy in the social economy area approaches a budget of some €17 billion. We forget, as a result of the transformation over the past ten or 15 years, that less than 9% of that budget now deals directly with unemployment. The significant policy area that has emerged and the resources that have been put into place to deal with it are formidable and substantial. That does not mean the sort of policies that have evolved over the past few years are perfect or that they cannot be enhanced or improved upon — they can.

Picking up on Deputy Shortall's and Deputy Enright's comments during the course of the debate, one can see the co-relation between many of the policies' impacts on people's ability to move smoothly from being assisted within the social welfare system into either full or part-time employment and that is the real challenge. This is ongoing and we need to effect the same changes with regard to lone parents.

I accept the point made by Deputy Enright. When we use the word "mandatory", it is not that we are threatening people in terms of bringing them into the system. We all agree that people who are dependent on the social welfare system should interact with the system and should not be unknown to it or not understand it themselves. They should be able to deal with and interact with it on a constant basis.

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