Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy answered his own question when he said that lone parents had a higher risk of poverty. Unfortunately, that is true for them and their children. My objective is to end that situation for lone parents and to move them out of the category of being at risk of poverty, and particularly to remove their children from that risk. This will be achieved by first giving them opportunities in regard to education, training and qualification so that, when they do take up employment, whether full-time or part-time, particularly when their children are over 14 and settled in school, they will then be in a position to earn an income that can support them and their children.

The irony is that during the Celtic tiger years, when this country was doing very well and we pretty much had full employment, unfortunately, because our social welfare system seemed to require people to stay on social welfare for up to 22 years for each child, as the Deputy is suggesting, the result was that we had more lone parents and their children at risk of poverty than we do now. We are now going to put a significant additional amount of public funding from our taxes and PRSI into, for example, the back to work family dividend, where if a lone parent does take up employment he or she will get to keep all of the child welfare payments of up to €30 a week that they receive in respect of each child for a year, and 50% for the next year.

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