Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

The website of the JobBridge scheme lists the following eligibility criteria: one must be unemployed and actively seeking work, and one must be on the live register and currently in receipt of jobseeker's benefit, jobseeker's allowance or signing for social insurance contribution credits for three of the past six months. This appears fairly straightforward. Unfortunately, it is not so. Only when one reads the fine print of the scheme is it revealed that a person can meet these criteria and still be excluded, on the basis that the person is also in receipt of one parent family payment. For the record, one can be in receipt of one parent payment and a reduced jobseeker's benefit payment.

Therefore, single parents are obliged to give up their one parent payment if they wish to avail of the scheme. This is unfair, discriminatory and detrimental, not only to the parent but to his or her child or children. It must be remembered that the purpose of the one parent payment is to help the recipient provide for his or her child in the absence of income from a partner. It is not a payment made solely for the benefit of the adult in the family.

When my colleague, Deputy Ó Snodaigh, raised this matter with the Minister by way of parliamentary question, Deputy Burton's response was to state that "Individuals in receipt of One Parent Family Payment may access a wide range of activation supports including the FÁS Work Placement Programme". However, the FÁS work placement programme is, according to the scheme's own website, "unpaid and voluntary". In fact, participation in such a scheme may entail a net cost to the participant, particularly in rural areas such as my constituency where travel is likely to be involved, and costs such as lunches and child care. The weekly JobBridge payment, €50, may be a pittance to some but at least it would go some way towards the costs of a person's involvement in the scheme. The FÁS programme is not an adequate substitute.

The problems this exclusion is causing are not hypothetical. I received the following correspondence from a constituent in receipt of lone parent family payment and already participating in a work placement programme. She writes:

It is beginning to get disheartening going into a job every day not getting paid. I am struggling to get by. I have not been able to pay my mortgage for months, I can't afford to tax my car at the moment, I have no oil for my house and it is starting to get colder. I am at my wits end trying to figure out how I am meant to pay my bills, raise my two teenage sons, celebrate Christmas and put my son through college next year when all I am in receipt of is €247 a week from One Parent Family payments. I get nothing from their dad and no other help. My parents are unable to help me anymore as my dad is struggling to find work himself and I took up this work placement as a way to try and make a future for myself and my boys. I am fighting back the tears typing this because I have always been such a self-sufficient person and I feel that I am now such a failure because I can't provide for my children. I feel totally trapped and at a loss of what to do next. If I leave my work placement, I blow any chance of getting a job in the future here but it is costing me money I don't have, to come to work every day.

I ask the Minister to consider sincerely the words I have read. This constituent, who is well known to me and whose integrity I can confidently vouch for, is not only suffering financially because of her inability to access even the meagre payment available under the JobBridge scheme, it is also clearly causing her enormous emotional distress. She is not alone. I have no doubt that any Member in this House who talks to constituents will know of cases similar to that I have outlined. In the face of an economic crisis, the Government's policies are leading - I do not believe this in any way stretches the situation - to mental health issues for people. That is a fact of life, very sadly, from the cohort and profile of cases that are coming to my office on a week-on-week basis. I ask the Minister to sympathetically and compassionately respond to the appeal I have made.

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