Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

This section essentially deals with the phasing in of the abolition of one-parent family payments for lone parents when their children reach the age of seven. The Minister has suggested that the cut in payments to lone parents when their children reach the age of seven is designed to help them become financially independent, that is, to encourage them to get back to work. The truth is that these are complex transition arrangements designed to minimise the outrage that is likely to be felt, and is being felt, by lone parents as it becomes apparent that the Government is targeting them for a nasty regressive cut that is going to have precisely the opposite effect to the one that the Government claims it wants to achieve, namely, it is going to drive lone parents out of work. Lone parents and organisations representing them who have examined the measures are clear that this would be the effect of the changes, namely, to drive lone parents out of work, exactly the opposite of what the Government has said it wants to achieve.

These sections are designed as the intricate machinery that is required to try to minimise the level of popular anger and protest over what the Government is trying to do. There would be uproar if the Government reduced the eligibility for all lone parents with immediate effect when their children reach the age of seven. The protests we have seen to date would be multiplied by ten or probably a hundred in terms of their size. This measure is designed in a deceptive fashion to phase in the change gradually so that the real impact will be felt a little further down the line and for new applicants for the lone-parents payment. The choreography of the nasty cut masquerading as something progressive cannot hide the simple fact about the legislation, namely, that it is difficult for lone parents to get jobs or to access education because they are lone parents and they need child care. It is as simple as that. Whether lone parents are trying to get jobs or access education and to upskill in order to access the jobs market, they need child care. Lone parents need child care whether their child is aged one to seven or beyond that from seven to at least 14 years. They need support in order to be able to access education and jobs and this measure takes that support away from them.

The Minister's suggestion that new applicants will be able to apply for jobseeker's allowance poses a real question which she should answer directly. If someone is to be entitled to jobseeker's allowance, do they not have to be available for work? Is that not the simple criteria; that one will be interrogated by the local social welfare office about whether one is available for work. If one does not have the means to provide child care for one's children, one is not available for work and it is as simple as that. One would have to lie to the social welfare office to suggest one was available for work and, therefore, one would not be entitled to jobseeker's allowance as currently constituted.

Lone parent payments were not so great in the first place but they gave a little bit of a leg up to lone parents to be able to cover the cost of child care. It is completely inadequate given the very high cost of child care in the State, its lack of availability and the extreme difficulty of getting one of the very few jobs now available. It is to the immense credit of lone parents that approximately 60% of them are in employment at present given the lack of support and the lack of affordable child care available to them. They have made a supreme effort. The lone parent payments have been of some assistance, although entirely inadequate, in allowing lone parents to access jobs. This support, which has assisted to some degree in getting lone parents back into the workforce and education, is to be removed once their children reach the age of seven. This is the simple fact and there is nothing else before us.

We have received an off-the-cuff remark and verbal commitments to putting in place child care facilities and other supports which would mitigate against the impact of this nasty regressive cut. However, as Deputy Ó Snodaigh stated, nothing concrete is on the legislative programme and nobody believes it is credible that these supports will be in place. I presume the Government simply hopes the hullabaloo and anger will have died down by the end of the year, that people will just have to resign themselves to this nasty cut and its consequences and that they will forget about the Government's commitments to a Scandinavian model of child care.

The engineering of the phasing in period is amazingly intricate. Trying to work it all out and figure out at what point people's entitlements begin to be reduced indicates it took much thought and work, and fair play to the officials for working it all out. However, they are operating under a political direction from the Minister and the Government. Where is the intricate engineering when it comes to putting alongside it and running parallel to it child care supports and facilities and other arrangements to compensate for the cut in lone parents' payments once children reach the age of seven or the various ages in the phasing in period? This is the simple reality of the Bill and the section. It contains complex engineering to cut the entitlement of lone parents to the vital support they need if they are to access employment and education driving out of work people who want to work and contribute to society. It is unbelievably regressive.

When Fianna Fáil reduced the age from 18 to 14, the now Minister of State, Deputy Shortall, stated reducing it to the age of 13 would drive 12,000 more people onto the live register and out of work. Why does this logic not still apply? Is this another treacherous U-turn by the Labour Party turning on the very people who probably voted for it looking for protection? It has turned on them, driving lone parents, mostly young women who are struggling as it is, out of the workforce and back into dependency on social welfare and the poverty that goes with it.

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