Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The purpose of the reform of the one-parent family payment is to maximise the opportunities for lone parents to enter into employment and thus to increase their income. I welcome the considerable debate generated by this reform, which commenced in 2012. My priority is to ensure that as a society we arrive at a situation in which lone parents have the same opportunities as everyone else to access employment, training and education. For too long, significant numbers of lone parents have been typecast and confined to social welfare dependency. Despite the commitment of extensive funding to lone-parent payments since the 1970s, lone parents remain most at risk of poverty, and their children are at high risk of poverty. Research shows that being at work reduces the at-risk-of-poverty rate for lone parents by three quarters compared to those who do not work.

The Department has published a social impact assessment of the main welfare and tax measures of budget 2015 and of the water charges. It found that the household incomes of employed lone parents will increase by almost 0.8%, while those of unemployed lone parents will increase by 0.6%. This positive outcome for lone parents reflects the increases in child benefit, the partial restoration of the Christmas bonus, the reduction of the USC for many lone parents in work, the back-to-work family dividend and the maintenance of the disregard at €90. It has not been possible to capture the full impact of the one-parent family reforms using the Switch model. It is hoped this will be possible as part of the ongoing development of the model. For instance, the model cannot capture the value to a person on full social welfare of having a medical card, for example, compared to a person in work on a low wage who might not qualify for a medical card.

In the next budget I look forward to examining the various supports available to all families with children, including single-parent families. In particular, I want to look at the scope for further improvements in child benefit as well as other supports for families in full-time or part-time employment.

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