Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want as good an outcome for their children as I want for anybody else's children, and I make no apologies to Sinn Féin, which wants to lock down poverty and joblessness. A strong welfare system is essential as a safety net. In the teeth of Ireland's worst economic crisis, the Labour Party in government protected this safety net and, with the recovery under way, has started making targeted increases. All the increases are fully funded and sustainable, and are the work of a party serious about its responsibilities to our State and our people. It is not enough to have the system function as a strong safety net. It must also help people to get back on their feet, build financial independence over time and build better lives for themselves and their families. This is the purpose of the one-parent reforms.

When the Government took office, we had one overriding task, namely, to rebuild an economy in ruins, and rescue people's livelihoods in the process. Today, we have a jobs-led recovery and unemployment has fallen by more than a third since its crisis peak. Although it was an incredibly tough and painful period for our people, the sacrifices everybody made are paying off now. Had we made the wrong choices, it could have been very different. Throughout the worst of the crisis, we protected core weekly welfare rates. When the public finances were at their most vulnerable, we protected the most vulnerable. This helped maintain social cohesion. Our system of social transfers, as welfare payments are known, is the single most effective in the EU at preventing poverty. This is a fact, and is the Labour Party's record in government.

This is also a reforming Government, and it was clear from the evidence that the one-parent family scheme was in need of serious reform. Despite significant levels of investment - more than €1 billion a year from 2008 to 2012 - the scheme has consistently failed to prevent lone parents being significantly more at risk of consistent poverty than the population as a whole, as speaker after speaker from Sinn Féin acknowledged. This also leaves the children of lone parents at a high risk of poverty. I know how ambitious lone parents are for their children. The fact that children of lone parents are at a higher risk of poverty is not something Sinn Féin should defend and seek to leave unchanged. While Sinn Féin Members may be sincere, I sincerely think they are wrong. According to the most recent survey on income and living conditions, SILC, which half of the Sinn Féin Members quoted, 23% of lone parents are at risk of consistent poverty. This is two and half times greater than the population as a whole. If a lone parent is in work, the risk falls to about 10% while if he or she is not in work, the risk can be above 40%. The figure of 23% is a blend of the people in work with a much lower risk of poverty and the people out of work, who have a very high risk of poverty. This is unacceptable.

Before the reforms, Ireland was alone internationally in how we supported lone parents. Lone parents could have been on the one-parent family scheme until their youngest child turned 18, or 22 if the child was in full-time education. Other countries have moved away from providing income support of such long duration towards a shorter, more active, engagement approach. In New Zealand, the Netherlands and the UK, including Northern Ireland, the equivalent supports for lone parent cease when the youngest child reaches the age of five. I have never heard Sinn Féin in the North complain that support for lone parents stops when the youngest child is five. I do not know whether the Sinn Féin Members here are aware of it.

The countries I mentioned have better-developed child care systems. The Government is committed to improving the provision of child care, including the supports available for lone parents. We have introduced schemes that offer heavily subsidised child care places to assist lone parents to take up a community employment place or a job. I resent the cheap remarks by Deputies Mary Lou McDonald and Aengus Ó Snodaigh on the provision of child care for people on community employment schemes, which is very good and heavily subsidised.

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