Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

All of the money to enable that women to drive a car back and forth across the city comes from a social welfare payment which is supposed to sustain her in a stable position. It does not, it cannot and it was never meant for that. It is an example of the hidden poverty we are seeing.

People cannot afford clothing and can no longer ask community welfare officers for clothing grants because such requests are refused point blank. The system may have changed for a very good reason - namely, because grants were being given for communion clothes - but the problem is that community welfare officers wiped out the grant across the board. Only in very rare cases can people get grants for clothing, such as if one's house burns down.

The Minister made a major play about getting many people back to work. One of the significant restrictions on people returning to work, especially lone parents, is the cost of child care. Nothing has be done to provide the affordable Scandinavian model of child care that the Minister promised when she made major cuts to lone parent payments. I mentioned all of these points in my contribution on Second Stage. One-parent families are those most at risk of poverty. They are not my figures; rather, they are consistent from any investigation into lone parent families. They have the highest rate of consistent poverty, yet their payments were cut.

I note the Minister's earlier declaration that she hopes to increase the Christmas bonus next year. The problem is that it is a once-off payment at one time of the year. People would prefer to receive a weekly increase when they need the money. The bonus is welcome, but it does not deal with weekly bills.

As I said, I will not rehash all of the points on lone parents and child poverty. The Minister was quite condescending when she told us we had ignored all of those who were returning to work. However, others did not and will not find work. Some gave up work to save the State money by caring for a loved one, and the thanks they got from the Minister was a €325 cut in the respite care grant, which placed some in more impoverished circumstances.

These amendments are reasonable and would not impose a major cost on the State, but would set out the full effects of the range of measures since 2008. Such effects include the well-being of children, dealt with in amendment No. 7, and the impact on one-parent families and their levels of poverty, dealt with in amendment No. 17. Those cohorts are not likely to be significantly affected by any changes in the budget or the Bill because the measures are minimal in comparison to the list of over 20 measures that have had an impact on the least well-off in our society which I read earlier.

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