Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The Deputy referenced them as well and indicated that she thinks some elements of their systems are progressive. The situation in those countries is that a parent parenting on their own as well as being assisted with income support, as in our case, is also assisted to get back into education and training and, ultimately, into work because all the indications are that the best route to tackling poverty is for a child to be in a household where one or both parents are at work. That is the net point.

As a country, we have been spending more than €1 billion per year on lone parent support, yet the outcomes in terms of poverty for the parent and the child are not the kind of outcomes I would like to see, in particular in the context of the money we are spending. Over the past decade, this country has invested more than €1 billion in developing child care infrastructure under the national child care investment programme and prior to that, the European Union co-funded equal opportunities and child care programmes. We have the early childhood care and education programme, which is open to child between three years and three months. Some 61,000 places are being provided under that programme - 17,000 by community providers and 44,000 by private providers. There is also the community child care subvention, with which I am sure the Deputy is familiar.

Before the changes are brought in in a number of years time, we must work to expand the provision and give lone parents and their children a better outcome and better opportunities so they are not in poverty. The Deputy and others have stated repeatedly that, despite the money we spend, many lone parents and their children are poorer than we would like.

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