Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

This morning, I had the honour of launching a very important document by the ESRI about families in poverty and children being at risk of poverty in Ireland. It shows what a number of Deputies have referenced, which is that children most at risk of poverty are those in lone parent families. It is not me who is stating this, but a group of researchers and professors of the ESRI, including Dorothy Watson, Bertrand Maître and Chris Whelan. The very detailed study of work and living conditions in Ireland contains a huge amount of statistics in its ten chapters. I know it is very difficult for Deputies opposite to accept, but the report shows comprehensively that, aside from the, thankfully, very small but very worrying number of children subject to neglect because their parents may have substance abuse problems or violence issues in the family, those at the highest risk of poverty are the children of lone parents. The highest risk lone parent is one who has left education and stayed exclusively as a lone parent over a long period of time. This may be difficult for some of the Deputies opposite to accept but I invite them to examine the report. If they reflect on this and perhaps go to their constituencies and examine the situation, I think they will find what is shown in the report is correct. The way to reduce this high risk of poverty for the children is to get lone parents to return to education or training as soon as possible and ultimately to enter financially independent work.

The report deals with what we discussed yesterday with regard to the tens of thousands of people in Ireland parenting on their own, but shows they do not fit Deputy Boyd Barrett's idea of loan parents. They are people whom the country, their families and themselves assisted to keep up their education, qualify, train and ultimately have a financially independent job. I listened to Deputy Boyd Barrett argue profoundly that the current payments to lone parents are not enough. The country is spending more than €1 billion on these payments. I do not know whether he has any consciousness at all about low-paid people in employment who pay taxes and PRSI. We know he is in favour of tax and PRSI because he said so yesterday. Unlike Scandinavia, he is not in favour of a range of taxes or any taxes to do with anything other than work. However, he seems to have no consciousness that people at work, particularly low-paid people at work, contribute through taxation. He seems to have a view that somehow or other everyone in Ireland can receive social welfare but nobody is meant to contribute apart from the few theoretical people who will pay for everything. Countries that are doing well but are not perfect and have good social welfare systems and good outcomes for children do not put lone parents into a separate category for long periods of their working life. Rather they provide them with pathways to continue their education, if disrupted by their having had a child or children on their own. They are encouraged to take part in training and get back to work.

The Deputy does not seem to understand that while social welfare is a support it is a hand-up rather than a hand-out. It is important that our pensioners have a decent income to live on when they retire and that people who lose their jobs are given income support. We are in a difficult place in economic terms. If Leon Trotsky were to return to earth tomorrow morning he would not be able to reincarnate the broken Irish banking system or property bubble. It would take him time to work it out. If we are to ensure that pensioners and everyone else who contributes to social welfare gets a decent level of support when they require it then we must as a country ensure that all our people of working age, regardless of their relationship status, are encouraged, empowered and enabled to work from the time they finish their education until their retirement. Otherwise, we will not have enough people in work to support the type of social welfare system that as a country we are correct to aspire to.

Let us look again at the relevant age in other countries, many of which I am sure the Deputy has visited. It appeared from his contribution yesterday that he has great knowledge of the United States. Why do Germany, Italy, Sweden and Norway end exclusive categorisation of a person as a lone parent when the youngest child reaches the age of three? Each of those countries has in place good quality systems which we would admire.

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