Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

Other issues were raised by Members, particularly in regard to young people and families. Deputy Shortall asked about the definition applicable to the one-parent family payment. The provision in this Bill seeks to ensure that a category of unmarried persons who are currently excluded from eligibility for this benefit, via an anomaly in the legislation, will be included. Under the current law, an unmarried claimant of one-parent family payment must be the parent of the qualifying child for whom he or she is claiming, whereas this requirement does not apply in the case of a separated or widowed person. For example, if a brother who is unmarried takes over the care of his sibling, he is excluded from the one-parent family payment. The purpose of the provision is to include such persons; it is not designed to exclude anybody.

There has been much talk about lone parents. We all accept that they are a particularly high-risk group, as are their children. Whereas poverty indicators show that rates of poverty have decreased significantly for large groups of people in recent years, this has not happened to the same degree in the case of lone parents and their children.

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