Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour)

I am disappointed by some of the inflammatory language used on both sides of the House. Anyone who would suggest that those on social welfare benefit are in receipt of a suite of allowances should check his or her language. Anyone who recommends the introduction of biometric scanning should have that costed. We have 450,000 people on the live register and I would like to see how much biometric scanning of that number of people would cost and where we would find the finance for it. This is a particularly insulting suggestion for those who are going through the turmoil of unemployment. To suggest that there are not enough activation measures is to assume the Pathways to Work document was never launched and is not in existence.

Some of the challenges in the social welfare budget are stark. While 450,000 people now depend on social welfare, the Minister was required to take more than €300 million out of the social welfare budget. She has achieved a minor miracle in taking that amount of money out of the social welfare budget while keeping the basic rate of social welfare untouched.

Further reforms will be needed. We will shortly be looking at next year's budget and at how we can target child benefit in order to focus on lower income families. We must tackle the issues of employer's sick pay, social welfare for the self-employed and other initiatives.

I congratulate the groups that have campaigned on the lone parents issue in the last number of months. I met some of them yesterday. It is encouraging that a group of people who were once so derided and were the recipients of politicians' scorn are now so articulate and empowered to fight their corner. Whenever I raised this issue with the Minister in the last number of months, as Labour Deputies such as Deputy Ciara Conway and others have also done, I have felt nothing but a sense of compassion and respect from the Minister.

My colleague, Councillor Jane Horgan-Jones, proposed a motion on this issue on behalf of the Dublin North-Central constituency council at the Labour Party Conference last weekend. The motion pointed out that 18% of all families are now lone parent families, that lone parents are more likely than any other social group to be living in consistent poverty and that children living in lone parent families are experiencing deprivation and poverty more than any other demographic. The motion asked the conference to recognise that when the impact of taxes, benefits and child care costs are combined the financial incentive for lone parents with young children to take up employment is lower in Ireland than in any other OECD country. The motion also asked the conference to note that lone parent families are headed predominantly, although not exclusively, by women, and that this issue is therefore intrinsically linked to the struggle for gender equality in society. The motion asked the conference to recognise that the single biggest barrier to the labour market for lone parents is the availability and affordability of child care, as mentioned in the 2009 ESRI report on female participation in the Irish labour market. The motion asked the conference to recognise that lone parents of both genders often experience difficulty in accessing work, education and training opportunities because of a lack of good quality affordable child care and after-school care. The Dublin North-Central constituency council was asking the Minister to refrain from imposing any further cuts to benefits for lone parent families and to address the issue of child care. I am glad to say that is exactly what she has done.

Many of those who have campaigned against this measure have said seven years is too young. The Minister agrees with that. She has said she will proceed with the measure to reduce the upper age limit to seven years only in the event that a credible pathway to the delivery of such a system of child care is in place by the end of this year. If that is not forthcoming the measure will not proceed. This is a Minister who listens and who understands the social welfare system and the nature of unemployment and child poverty.

All sides of this Parliament must launch a war on child poverty. The one issue we have consistently failed to tackle effectively in recent years is creeping child poverty, which is deepening and getting worse. It is something on which we must launch a war. The Minister understands the position, which is why I commend her for her clarification on payments to lone parents. I caution all sides of the House to avoid the inflammatory language being used in the debate. Those in receipt of social welfare payments desperately need the payment and deserve greater leadership from Deputies in the Chamber.

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