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

I thank the Minister of State for his courtesy and how he has dealt with the Bill. Like Deputy Joan Collins, I was tempted to vote against the Bill, but because of the improvements contained therein, I do not propose to vote against it. However, I deeply regret the Government's decision to proceed with the change in the one-parent family payment, despite promises to the contrary by the Minister. The reason for the change advanced by the Government is to incentivise lone parents to go out to work. This must be the first time in the history of the universe when people were supposed to be incentivised by being made worse off.

A lone parent who is not working and does not want to, or perhaps cannot, engage with the workplace, for whatever reason, is not affected by this legislation. It is only working parents who will be adversely affected and they will be pretty dramatically affected. The figures produced by SPARC that incorporate the improvements brought about by the family dividend clearly show that those people, who are already in very low-income occupations and who are scraping from one end of the week to the other to survive, will lose a substantial chunk of their income.

For example, yesterday's edition of The Irish Timescontained a feature about a woman. She allowed her photograph to be taken, and her name and address to be used. She is a lone parent working part time and getting €94 per week. Because she has a child who will be over seven on the relevant date in May, with that €94 over five days, she will not be entitled to jobseeker's allowance and therefore she will have to give up her job. Obviously she cannot live on €94 per week, albeit she is getting €50 a week in maintenance from her husband. She will have to give up her job. The net result will be that whereas her full income at present is €361 a week, that will drop to €267 per week next month because of the changes the Government has introduced. That is a quarter of her income. There are people in this House who might feel it if they lost a quarter of their income, but for someone on €361 a week to lose a quarter of her income is pretty devastating.

I spoke to two single parents who came to see me over the weekend. I know both their families. They are both working part-time and they will both lose 20% to 25% of their income in May directly as a result the changes. While it is all very well for the Department of Social Protection to suggest they get more hours and qualify for family income supplement, in the real world sometimes these people cannot get more hours. A person cannot demand more hours from an employer. In many cases they would not be able to do more hours because of their child-minding responsibilities.

What is happening to lone working parents is a travesty and is a denial of justice. The Tánaiste gave a very firm commitment on the floor of this House that that change would not be triggered until we had a Scandinavian-type system of child care. As we clearly do not have that, the Tánaiste is going back on a promise she made in good faith and which we certainly accepted in good faith here in the Dáil. That is very regrettable. Even at this late stage I appeal to the Minister of State, who is a very sympathetic individual, understands these things and is dealing with these sorts of people as much as I am, to prevail on the Tánaiste to postpone that change. It is not too late.

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