Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

As a number of Deputies stated, the Government published a discussion paper which contains its proposals for supporting lone parents. This paper puts forward suggestions and proposals on tackling obstacles to employment not just for lone parents, but also for low income families. Our strategy for the future refers not only to lone parents, but also to those on qualified adult payments and low incomes. We want to discover how these people can be supported.

It is always difficult to discuss lone parents in the context of the social welfare system. There are 100,000 lone parents who are not dependent on social welfare payments, who are in employment, who are rearing their children, who are doing the best they can and who never turn to the State for assistance. There are then the 85,000 people who are dependent on social welfare and who are in receipt of the one parent family payment. We estimate that approximately 60% of the latter are also in employment. However, they tend to occupy low paid jobs and part-time positions and their work has to be organised around their child care and parenting needs. The initiatives introduced in recent years to allow lone parents to work without their payments being interfered with have encouraged them to take up employment. However, we have discovered that people tend to work only the requisite number of hours and do not exceed this because they fear losing their payments.

In many other countries, state payments for one parent families cease when children reach four, five or six years of age. I refer here to Canada, Australia, Sweden and Finland. Such payments cease at three months in the United States. The United Kingdom is reducing the age at which payments will cease to ten. In Ireland, lone parents can continue to receive payments until their children reach 22 years of age so long as those children remain in education. As a result of the conditions that apply, this militates against lone parents forming long-term relationships, marrying or entering the workforce. The conditions we have established in our social welfare system — for which we must take responsibility — are probably not in the best long-term interests of lone parents, their children or society in general.

Certain countries introduced voluntary systems with regard to activating people to re-enter the workforce but these did not work. People do not take up the option in this regard because they fear they will lose out. The proposals that have been set out — which, to a large degree, form the basis of what will be our future policy — refer to working with lone parents and other low income families in the areas of training and education, providing them with child care supports and dealing with those issues that are paramount to those who are on their own. Working with the Office of the Minister for Children, increasing the number of child care places available and providing community child care facilities are central to our policy in this area. Encouraging people to re-enter education and training is also important.

In the past year alone, a number of lone parents availed of the back-to-education allowance in order to pursue second and third level courses. Some 1,386 lone parents availed of the second level option, while 561 availed of that relating to third level. A further 1,271 availed of the back-to-work allowance. The research indicates that where they are given encouragement and support, lone parents are anxious to avail of the best education and training in order that they might participate in the workforce.

The proposals to which I refer form a framework. It was originally envisaged that payment would cease when children reached seven or eight years of age. I am of the view that this is too young. When a lone parent first comes into receipt of social welfare payments, he or she should be guided, directed and given as much support as possible. That is the basis of our strategy.

It is not in the best interests of a child, his or her parent or society to pay out money until he or she reaches 22 years of age without first providing that parent every support that will allow him or her to play his or her full role in society. I am obliged to consider this matter from the perspective of poverty. It is extremely encouraging that the statistics relating to lone parents in poverty have dropped significantly. As already stated, there was a sharp fall in the consistent poverty rate among lone parent households from 33.9% in 2006 to 20.1% in 2007. However, the child of a lone parent remains four times more likely to be in poverty than any of his or her peers. The consistent poverty rate among these children fell from 10.3% to 7.4%.

It is in the best interests of everyone to have a long-term strategy in place. We have been working on this matter a great deal but I required time to meet representatives of the various groups and consider the findings in the reports relating to the pilot projects in Coolock and Kilkenny. What we discovered is that lone parents do not constitute a homogenous group. The backgrounds, education, training, aspirations, family circumstances, support structures, access to child care, transport needs, etc., of these individuals are all different. This can make developing a long-term strategy difficult. However, I am hopeful that I will be in a position to introduce that strategy next spring.

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