Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his kind remarks, in particular those relating to his former city council colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Kevin Humphreys.

The critical issue is to focus on the outcomes. Although the State has invested, properly, very significant resources in one-parent families, I remain concerned that, as has been shown in a range of studies, the outcomes are not as strong as they might be. With the new structures we are moving to, we will be doing what many countries we admire in terms of social welfare provision are doing, which is to encourage people at a certain stage, when their children are well settled in school, and through a whole set of supports to go back to education, training and ultimately to employment. I have made significant additional resources available in respect of family income supplement to provide a top-up for families with children. The Deputy might have seen a recent report by the ESRI showing that among households without significant amounts of work for adults, lone parents are among the family units which might have such difficulty. We will emphasise the opportunities around training and education in order that people can take them up at an appropriate time, and we hope that will help many people to get a fairly well-paying job.

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