Peter Kelly (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)

I wish to share time with Deputy Niall Blaney. I am pleased to speak today on the Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2010. Yesterday, I listened with interest to my friend and colleague, the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív, outline the main provisions of this important Bill. I am very aware of the work of his Department as it impacts on almost every person in the State on a daily basis. It is a proactive Department, the workings of which I am very familiar with through my constituency office. The Department administers 50 different schemes and services with more than 1.5 million people benefiting from weekly payments and more than 580,000 families receiving child benefit in respect of 1.1 million children each month. Fianna Fáil is proud of its record of supporting those most in need in our society. As the Minister said yesterday in his address, over the past 12 years, we have increased pension rates by approximately 120%, unemployment benefits by almost 130% and child benefit payments by more than 330%. The cost of living has increased by approximately 40% over the same period.

There are a number of elements in the Bill which I would like to touch on briefly. One of the changes which I believe will be tabled as a Committee Stage amendment is a very practical transfer of work schemes across to the Department of Social Protection, so that the Minister can have a focus on job activation. The Minister will also introduce an amendment to provide him with the necessary statutory powers on the employment services and community services programme of FÁS. I welcome this joined-up approach to looking at job activation in its wider context with income support. There are real and particular provision needs in communities that we could address through these schemes. One of the great challenges faced at present, not just in my area of Longford Westmeath but throughout the country, is where families have gone from having two incomes to one, or worse, from one income to none. It is important that we have work opportunities for people caught in this situation.

What struck me in particular about the discussion on the one-parent family payment is the fact that statistics show that many lone parents are in poverty. This is despite significant State spending by successive Fianna Fáil Ministers on one-parent families as well as improvements made to the one-parent family payment over the years. The latest EU-SILC figures show that in 2008, 17.8% of lone parents experienced consistent poverty compared to 3% of two-parent households and to 4.2% of the population as a whole. The cost of the one-parent family payment scheme in 2009 was €1.12 billion. When other supports are taken into account, including child benefit and, where appropriate, rent supplement and family income supplement, total expenditure in this area exceeded €2 billion that year.

If, after all that investment, lone parents are still in a cycle of poverty then we have to change our way of assisting them and improving their quality of life.

In general, the best route out of poverty is through paid employment. It is recognised that work, and especially full-time work, may not be an option for parents of young children. However, it is believed that supporting parents to participate in the labour market once their children have reached an appropriate age will improve their economic situation and their social well-being and that of their families. The current arrangements, whereby a lone parent can receive the one parent family payment until their child is 18 years of age or 22 years of age if he or she is in full-time education without any requirement for them to engage in employment, education or training, are not in the best interests of the parent, their children or society.

Under the new proposals, the one parent family payment will be paid until the youngest child in the family reaches 13 years of age. It was initially proposed in the Government discussion paper on proposals for supporting lone parents in 2006 that a parental allowance would continue until the youngest child reached 7 years of age. For existing recipients, payment will be phased out over a six year period. I welcome this phasing out period. It is important to say that this is a phased change and recipients should not have anxiety about this change.

When the youngest child reaches 13 years of age if the parent is still in need of support he or she will be entitled to claim jobseekers allowance, or if in low-paid employment of 19 hours or more per week, family income supplement. I welcome also that notification to existing recipients will be put in place advising them of changes to the scheme and a reminder will issue to relevant recipients when their youngest child reaches the age of 10 encouraging them to avail of educational, training and back to employment opportunities.

I am very conscious that many lone parents will need access to education, good quality relevant training and child care to acquire the skills they will need to gain employment. There are a wide range of education and training opportunities available through the Department of Social Protection, the Department of Education and Skills and FÁS for lone parents to strengthen their qualifications and skills base and thus maximise their chances of meeting the requirements of our modern labour market. Currently, all lone parents who use FÁS employment services are provided with a one-to-one guidance interview with an employment services officer. As part of this process, lone parents are advised on current job vacancies, suitable training or employment programme places and may be referred to other FÁS supports.

A new support approach, the social inclusion model, to help people to overcome barriers and to increase their opportunities to access training, employment programmes and, ultimately the labour market, is currently being tested by FÁS with lone parents. This model involves a number of agencies including lone parent organisations and includes outreach information and recruitment and a "paving your way to work" programme concerned with the provision of information supports regarding welfare to work, budgeting, education and work options. The programme is aimed at individuals who are parenting alone. It is eight weeks in duration, is delivered from 9.30 a.m to 1 p.m. and mirrors calendared school holidays.

I am aware that good progress has been made on the provision of child care. The Government invested €1 billion over the past decade in developing a child care infrastructure under the national child care investment programme 2006-10 and, prior to that, the European Union co-funded the Equal Opportunities Child Care Programme 2000-06. As a result of these programmes, some 65,000 child care places will be available this year. This investment has made it possible to introduce the free early childhood care and education, ECCE, year for pre-school children.

In addition, the community child care subvention scheme, CCSS, funds community child care facilities to enable them to charge reduced child care fees to disadvantaged and low-income families. Almost 1,000 community services are now in the CCSS, the number of full-time equivalent children attending is almost 30,000 and the number of parents using the services is nearly 18,000.

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