Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle's office for allowing me to raise what I regard as a grave injustice being perpetrated against the most vulnerable group in society, namely, lone parents. We live in a country where one in six of our population are living below the internationally accepted poverty line. In addition, a recent European survey indicated that a lone parent is 230% more likely than the average person to be living in poverty. A total of 40% of lone parents fall into the category of being at risk of poverty.

Following a change introduced by the Government, from next July any lone parent who has a child past the age of seven years will no longer be categorised as a lone parent. Such a person will be moved to the family income supplement or jobseeker's allowance, as the case may be. This is going to have huge financial consequences for a large number of lone parents throughout the country.

The irony is that the Minister for Social Protection has repeatedly told us that these changes were designed to incentivise lone parents back into the workplace. The supreme irony is that for a lone parent who is not working and simply staying at home and getting the lone parents allowance, in financial terms this change will make no difference whatsoever. Such people will be in the same position financially before as after or after as before. However, the change will specifically hit working lone parents.

My interpretation of the term "incentive" is that we make it worthwhile for someone to do something and give that person a reward for doing something. One example is the family income supplement scheme, under which we give people an incentive to take up a low-paid job because it widens the gap between what they could earn and what they would have received on social welfare. The Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection reduced the jobseeker's allowance for people under the age of 21 years from €200 per week. She said that they would have an incentive to go on a training programme because they would get €160 per week. This must be the first time in the history of the English language that someone is regarded as being incentivised to work when they are made less well-off as a result. It seems to fly in the face of every other facet of Government policy.

One example is that of a lone parent who is also looking after an elderly relative. This person has both child care and caring responsibilities and would lose, on average, €86 per week. This is because the recipient will only get the carer's allowance in place of what he gets at present, which is the lone-parent allowance plus the half-carer's allowance. Given the change in the means test and the drop in the income disregard, lone parents who work for less than 19 hours per week and earn the miserly sum of €150 per week will lose a further €24. This amounts to a cumulative loss of €53 per week as a result of the changes made by the Minister. Perhaps the Minister of State or myself could afford to take a loss of €53 per week but for a lone parent dependent on the lone-parent's allowance and working for a €150 per week on a part-time basis it is a substantial hit.

Those who are working more than 19 hours per week and entitled to the family income supplement will lose the lone-parent allowance. Either they will get an increase in the family income supplement or they will go on family income supplement for the first time. By definition, the family income supplement will only be 60% of what these people had been getting by way of the lone-parent allowance. On average, these people will lose approximately €70 per week.

The Minister stated on 18 April 2012 that the drop in the age limit to seven years would not be introduced until such time as we had a Scandinavian-type child care system in the country. I have the exact quote before me which I can read into the record if time permits.

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