Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister's colleague, Deputy Brendan Ryan, said recently in a debate on this issue, the rules applying to the jobseeker's transition payment are a disincentive to work because if a person works for more than 20 hours, the disregard is only €60. Is that not a disincentive? As the Minister knows, I have been involved for decades in trying to assist people and the heads of one-parent families to get back into the workforce. Does the Minister agree that the system, as devised, is a disincentive and coercive because the rules state clearly there will be a penalty rate of the jobseeker's transition payment and that it can be lost completely if people are not prepared to go through the Minister's activation programme? She said in 2012 that she would bring forward a high quality child care system in order that there would be equality between two-parent and one-parent families. As the organisation SPARK, Single Parents Acting for the Rights of Kids, which represents single parent families has stated, the Minister compares her proposed child care system to the Swedish child care system, but the only Swedish child care system we have in place is the crèche in IKEA in Ballymun. That is all we have achieved. I put it to the Minister that she is shoring up fundamental discrimination between two-parent and one-parent families. Is that not the case?

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