Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In the budget, there have been modest but significant tax reductions, USC reductions and increases in social welfare payments as well as significant increases in areas like health and education. The effect is that everyone, including one-parent families, will share in the dividend.

I have outlined what one-parent families will share. It is really important that as a society we make provision for lone parents - those parenting on their own - where they have either not been involved with the labour market at all or been out of work for a period. As with everybody else who has become unemployed or is not working, and where children are settled in school, we must provide really good mechanisms to allow parents return to work. Normally, the mechanism for this is access to enhanced education opportunities, as the Deputy may know. That is what I have been seeking in the Department, as we provide for very significant numbers of lone parents and others in taking up educational opportunities while retaining the lone-parent payment. It is the best way of helping people to financial independence.

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