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

As I listen to this debate, I am becoming more frustrated and angry about the way in which this issue is being addressed. I keep thinking I am the single parent about whom the Minister of State is talking because I do not live full-time with my children. He makes comparisons with cohabiting couples who have been hammered by cuts in child benefit, income reductions and other changes. It would be a damn good idea to consider tax breaks that took account of the general costs hard-pressed parents pay in bringing up children. However, the Minister of State should not use comparisons with cohabiting couples to justify a cruel attack on one particular group.

As Deputy Pearse Doherty noted, €200 per month is a big chunk of money for the vast majority of those who have benefited from this tax credit. There is a major issue in this regard. Irrespective of how many days of the year my children spend with me, I must have somewhere for them to stay.

Whether it is the Minister of State's 100 days or fewer, where are they going to sleep when they come to stay? Are they to sleep in a box? One must have a bigger house. Both sets of parents must have a place for the children to stay, and that generates an extra cost.

The Minister's provision completely fails to take typical situations into account. For example, there are cases of working parents in which the single father would take the children every second weekend. Such fathers cannot take the children during the week because they are at school, and they take them every second weekend. The parents alternate but they make big financial contributions, and then the fathers would go to see their children during the week for half a day, for instance, to go to a football match or to go out shopping, and take them for extra days at the holiday period. Such parents might not fit into the Minister of State's criteria, but they incur significant extra costs because a key feature of ferrying children back and forth in that situation is extra transport costs that one would not have to pay for otherwise. The Minister of State is not taking these matters into account; he is hitting at a group of persons in a big way and, by extension, no doubt he is hitting at the children. It means parents will see their children less. That will be the effect.

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