Colm Keaveney (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This morning, I read with some interest the Minister's contribution to this debate. I must confess that even after everything that has happened since 2011, I am surprised by how condescending and how out of touch was the Minister's speech, its tone and some of the nuanced language here this afternoon on certain aspects of social welfare fraud. I found that clearly, there is an increasing detachment on the part of the Government with respect to the reality of people's lives. The Minister, clearly understanding the changes she proposes to make to the payments to lone-parent families mainly will have an impact on women, stated "As a woman, I simply do not understand why [receiving welfare payments] would be a more attractive option than becoming involved in education or training". All the lone parents who have approached me with their concerns have been women. They are approaching me, are contacting Members' offices and are in distress about the Labour Party's proposed changes with respect to the lone-parent family payment. They are mystified as to how the Minister seems to have deliberately ignored the concerns of these women but in particular, has ignored the child care costs. Not one welfare dependency has been discussed in this House today from a Government perspective without dealing with the main block in this regard. Members can talk about training and employment opportunities but not once have they heard any talk about the Scandinavian model of child care that has hundreds of women attending the offices of Members of this House about the impending changes to lone parents' payments. Once upon a time, the Minister would recall a different reality for women on low incomes because in 2012, she declared she would introduce a Scandinavian style of child care. There have been three successive austere and regressive budgets and one still discerns a rarefied attitude on the part of the Government about the area of child care.

Child care costs remain as the elephant in the room of this debate in terms of enabling women - it is primarily women - to engage in employment, training or education. Last week, my colleague, Deputy Troy, presented a roadmap for the provision of adequate child care needs of families in Ireland. I acknowledge it was expensive and no one believes it can be delivered as a yellow-pack proposal. However, Members must begin to move on this issue if these changes are to going to be sustainable. I wonder whether the Minister or her colleagues really believed that the Scandinavian style of child care she promised would ever be delivered; I doubt it. I got my answer in the headline of today's edition of The Irish Times, which states the recovery allows for income tax cuts. That is the core of this issue because the Government is not interested in extending State services in child care.

It is only interested in protecting existing services or running them down to prioritise tax cuts for the well-off but some Government Deputies, however, claim they are social democrats. There has still not been one proposal on how we will enable women to re-engage, retrain and reskill to get back into the workforce.

What exactly is the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection’s problem with women? Of the 38 cuts, changes and reductions in entitlements, totalling €1,431 million, which she has imposed on low-income families and individuals, eight of them, totalling €438 million and almost one third of the total, have been targeted at payments that predominately affect women and their children. That figure does not include the vicious attack on maternity payments introduced by the Government. Lone parents, again predominately women, are the main target of this Bill. It is beyond understanding how anyone concerned with poverty rates could focus cuts and deprivations on this cohort in society and vote in favour of these measures.

Since 2012, the consistent poverty rate among lone-parent families has increased from 17.4% to 23%. The deprivation rate now stands at over 63%. The cuts the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection has imposed have contributed to this increase. The measures she now proposes in the absence of adequate child care provision will only increase them again. Will she postpone this proposal until clear front-loaded investment is made in child care provision? Yesterday, Deputy Willie O'Dea outlined to the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection the monetary effect her proposals will have on the domestic circumstances of the most vulnerable people in our society. She must take heed of his statement of these simple mathematical facts and radically amend this Bill on Committee Stage.

The Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection’s assumption, explicitly stated in her Second Stage speech yesterday, that lone parents can simply increase their working hours at will is evidence of her detachment from the reality of the lives of those affected. As I said yesterday during the debate on the issue of family home repossessions, I have a sense that I am looking across the Chamber at a Government that no longer sees ordinary individuals and their families at the end of their decisions. The Government sees euro and cent, percentages and statistics, pluses and minuses but it fails to see any interest in the reality of what is occurring in people's lives. Contrary to her claims yesterday that there had been proper consultation with representative organisations of lone parents, the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection must listen to them properly.

The stakeholder group, One Family, states the issues relating to lone parents have been known since 2012 and lack of planning and implementation in respect of such parents is of major concern. It finds it quite astonishing that research on labour activation among lone parents is only being commissioned now and will become available in June when 39,000 lone parents are due to be activated on 2 July. The major concern for One Family in this regard relates to the lack of planning, support and information provided and responsibility taken by the Department of Social Protection in these actions. Along with SPARK, Single Parents Acting for the Rights of Kids, One Family also states child care is one of the main barriers to entering employment. A two-parent family will spend 34% of its income on child care but a one-parent family will spend 53% of net income.

There needs to be affordable, accessible and quality child care, underpinned with a sense of urgency, to facilitate those affected, mainly women, to return to the workplace. All stakeholders observe that lone-parent families are already among the poorest in society and are not in a position to withstand any further cuts to their incomes. FLAC, the Free Legal Aid Centres, called for the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection to carry out a social impact analysis of this Bill's measures. There have been debates in this House on the need to equality-proof such measures. While I welcome any proposals with respect to this that may emerge in the near future, we need to equality-proof this Bill and the proposals for payments to lone-parent families this summer. The rhetoric must be put to one side and such an analysis carried out. As it stands, this Bill is a retrograde and austere initiative which will affect the most vulnerable in society, the very people holding on by a thread.

Another measure missing from this Bill is a move to reverse the cuts to jobseeker’s allowance imposed on those under the age of 26. The Labour Party passed a proposal at its annual conference last week to reverse this cut. Leaving aside the issue of discrimination against the young, there is another discrimination that in other contexts would rightfully be forbidden under equality legislation, namely the indirect impact of such measures on minority groups such as the Traveller community.

Last Monday, I had an example of such a case in my constituency office, one which I know will resonate with the Minister of State opposite, Deputy Kevin Humphreys, because he too is connected to the front line. Many Travellers marry young and this has left many of them and their families in a precarious situation. My case this week involved a young man who is an amateur boxer with 17 provincial medals representing his province, nine national titles and three silver medals representing his country at European level. This young man, his wife and their two children have been reduced by this Government's social welfare policy to living with his parents-in-law and sister-in-law - seven people in total - in a three-bedroom house. These are the cuts that have forced people to make sacrifices that should never happen in any modern decent society. He and his family have been four years on a housing waiting list while their rent allowance and other social protection payments have been cut. Good people who have represented their country at the highest sporting level are forced to make such decisions.

Was it equality-proofed, no more than the decision to attack women in this country? I ask the Minister of State to suspend this initiative, leave it to one side, equality-proof it and stop using this fake language. The language used has been pathetic; we would not hear it from the Tories. What is going on in this Chamber? The Labour Party has not protected core social welfare payments and its own youth wing has confirmed it. Appalling language is used in the most draconian attacks, whether on the under-26s or lone parents. It is unacceptable. The language used this morning by the Minister, Deputy Joan Burton, in her comments on the Bill was also appalling. She has morphed into the Taoiseach and lost her touch with people. No right-minded person would proceed with this measure in June and July this year, discommoding thousands of families on the edge. I ask the Minister of State to listen to the stakeholders who have spoken about this and say it is insanity. Where are the other Labour Party Deputies? Where are the troops on this one?

I know that the Minister of State, Deputy Kevin Humphreys, is very hardworking. He is the salt of the earth and knows what I am really talking about. He hears the same stuff in his clinics. I know him to be assiduous, which is not in dispute. I am asking him to do the right thing and not to attack the most vulnerable. There is no argument that can equal those set out by Free Legal Advice Centres, FLAC, and the Social Policy and Aging Research Centre, SPARC. The impact on vulnerable persons can be addressed by the Minister of State in providing for a pause. I ask him to go to the committee and start amending this legislation. In the interests of social cohesion, I ask him not to let the legacy of the Government be the continual attacks on the most vulnerable in society.

I was appalled this morning when I looked at The Irish Times. It is now cheerleading on the issue of tax cuts. We are going to cut taxes for the well-off and continue to attack and fry the most vulnerable. That is appalling. Where are the social democrats?

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