Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 2:

To delete all words after “Dáil Éireann” and substitute the following:

“acknowledges that despite significant levels of investment, including an estimated €607 million in 2015, the one parent family payment scheme has not been successful in preventing lone parents from being significantly more at risk of consistent poverty than the population as a whole;

recognises that:

— in 2004, during the height of the economic boom lone parents were more than four and-a-half times more at risk of consistent poverty than the population as a whole - survey on income and living conditions, SILC, data;

— during the economic boom Ireland’s rate of lone parent employment was substantially below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, average of over 70%; and

— Ireland’s supports for lone parents need to be updated in order to provide for greater levels of opportunity for lone parents and for their children;

acknowledges that the very long duration, potentially 18-22 years, can engender long term social welfare dependency and associated poverty and social exclusion amongst lone parents and their families;

welcomes the Government’s decision to retain the one parent family payment income at €90 per week;

recognises the difficulties experienced by persons renting or seeking to rent in the current market fundamentally due to the reduced availability of affordable private rented accommodation;

recognises the Government’s commitment to:

— maintain core social welfare weekly rates of payment;

— tackle long term social welfare dependency by ending the expectation that lone parents will remain outside of the labour force indefinitely;

— enhance lone parents’ access to the range of education, training and employment supports and services in order to develop their skills set with the aim of securing employment and financial independence;

— support lone parents to make the transition from the one parent family payment onto another social welfare payment; and

— deliver significantly increased supply of social and affordable housing through the Construction 2020 strategy and the social housing strategy;

recognises that the Department of Social Protection has implemented preventative measures to provide for flexibility in assessing customers’ accommodation needs under the rent supplement scheme through the National Tenancy Sustainment Framework. Under this approach, the circumstances of tenants are considered on a case-by-case basis and rents are being increased above prescribed limits. The Department works with Threshold’s tenancy sustainment service in Dublin city and Cork city. This flexible approach has already assisted over 2,100 rent supplement households nationwide through increased rent payments;

welcomes the steps the Government has taken to ease the transition of affected lone parents from the one parent family payment, including;

— the introduction of the jobseeker's transitional payment which allows lone parents whose youngest child is aged seven to thirteen years to balance their caring responsibilities by exempting them from having to be available for and genuinely seeking full time employment;

— creating for the first time the opportunity for lone parents to have access to a case officer on a one to one basis in order to agree their own personal development plan;

— the extension to the jobseeker's transitional payment, to now allow all lone parents, who have a child aged seven to thirteen years, to access the special arrangements of the transitional arrangement and not just former recipients of the one parent family payment;

— the automatic reviews and increases of the family income supplement, FIS, for affected lone parents, following their transition from the one parent family payment;

— the introduction of the back to work family dividend for all lone parents who transition off the one parent family payment into employment, which allows them to retain their child proportion of their social welfare payment;

— the Government’s annual investment of €260 million in high quality, accessible and affordable childcare for parents, benefitting over 100,000 children. This is delivered through a range of childcare programmes for children, including the free pre-school year provided under the early childhood care and education scheme, ECCE, programme and as a range of supports provided to low income parents, that is, community childcare subvention programme, childcare education and training support programme, after-school childcare programme and community employment childcare, CEC, programme;

— the establishment of an interdepartmental group to carry out an economic and cost benefit analysis of policies and future options for increasing the supply, accessibility and affordability of quality child care;

— the decision to allow lone parents in receipt of half rate carer’s allowance to retain their one parent family payment until their youngest child is 16 years of age;

— allowing lone parents who are currently undertaking an education course and are in receipt of a Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, maintenance grant to maintain both their one parent family payment and the SUSI maintenance grant until they have completed their course of study; and

— the research the Department of Social Protection is sponsoring into an active inclusion approach to lone parents, which is examining best practice and innovative approaches to assisting lone parents improve their well-being; and recognises that after the reform lone parents with children who are aged seven years or older and in employment will continue to receive substantial support from the Department of Social Protection, such as:

— a lone parent with one child who has no work will receive on a jobseeker's payment almost €218 per week;

— if they work 19 hours at the national minimum wage they will receive on top of their wages €235 per week between FIS and the back to work family dividend – a total family income of €400 per week;

— a lone parent with two children on a jobseeker's payment with no work receives almost €248 per week from the Department of Social Protection;

— if they work 19 hours at the national minimum wage they will receive on top of their wages €323 per week between FIS and the back to work family dividend – a total family income of €488 per week;

— a lone parent with three children and no work on a jobseeker's payment will receive almost €278 per week from the Department of Social Protection; and

— if they work 19 hours at the national minimum wage they will receive on top of their wages €413 per week between FIS and the back to work family dividend – a total family income of €578 per week.”

I welcome the debate generated by the changes to the one-parent family payment, OFP, scheme. It is important that a populist party such as Sinn Féin, which at times claims to be left wing, should debate these issues. The changes are critically important because, over time, they will help greatly to reduce poverty among single-parent families. The easiest thing in politics is to do nothing, to shirk reforms that will be positive in the long term because a populist party such as Sinn Féin can seek to use them to claim that they would be otherwise. It would be the easiest thing in the world to call a halt to the one-parent family reforms - as Sinn Féin would do for short-term political gain that would ignore what is actually happening for families where people are parenting on their own. Yet Sinn Féin's answer, which is really about a welfare economy, is not a sustainable answer. Then again, Sinn Féin never does serious policies or serious answers.

Deputy Gerry Adams wanted Ireland to tell the institutions to go home and take their money with them. Unfortunately, we can now see where that approach has got the poor people of Greece. Sinn Féin wants to abolish the property tax and water charges, but how would it fund services, and who in society would pay for them? In that respect, tonight's motion and the contributions so far have been utterly predictable. In its rush to populism, Sinn Féin shows zero interest in tackling poverty, because the strongest protection against poverty is decent, secure and fairly paid work. That has been my abiding political conviction since I first entered politics and it has informed me throughout my career.

The Labour Party is the party of work, the party that believes in providing opportunity for all. Being on social welfare for 18 to 22 years is not opportunity. It is society saying that we have no higher ambition for a person or for their children.

At times, listening to the Sinn Féin contributors tonight, I got the impression they did not want anybody to leave social welfare. Perhaps they feel they have more control over people if they are permanently in receipt of social welfare. This is the tone of the Sinn Féin deputy leader's contribution.

See this speech in context