Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As I said to Deputy Kelleher, I am happy to facilitate a debate on the SILC report. The critical issue relates to poverty and it is important as we approach 2016 that we do everything as a country to secure an economic recovery that gets people of working age who are entirely dependent on social welfare incomes into employment. The best way to help lone parents is to help them into employment when their children are settled in school. When the youngest child is seven or more, a parent should be encouraged - as happens in the UK and Northern Ireland - to go back in particular to education, retrain and get a job. That is the absolute best way to help people who are parenting on their own with children. That is why the success of the Government in having an additional 80,000 people go back to work is one of the key indicators of a recovery taking hold in Ireland.

I am very aware of the fact that not every family has experienced recovery, which has been most difficult for those who are unemployed, including the long-term unemployed. The Deputy expressed concern about child poverty. Notwithstanding the economic difficulties this country has experienced and which have been very hard on people, I have prioritised in a very tight budget situation the weekly core social welfare benefits.

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