Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I ask in all honesty what does the Government have against lone parents. What it has done to them to date and is now proposing to do to working lone parents can only indicate a vindictive desire to attack lone parents and their children. The facts speak for themselves. No matter what way one tries to spin it, since the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, started to make cuts affecting lone parents, through cutting the income disregard, the concurrent payments and now the one-parent family payment, she has driven significant numbers of lone parents further into poverty and deprivation. We have seen a spectacular spike in the number of children living in poverty. There has been an increase of 137,000 since the Minister began her cuts in 2012, overwhelmingly because of the attacks on parents. The number of lone parents working has dropped from over 60% in 2012 to just over 30%. Therefore, how can the Government possibly claim this has anything to do with labour activation? It is, in fact, the Labour Party capitulating to the Fine Gael vendetta against lone parents and the visceral prejudice Fine Gael has against those it regards as social welfare-dependent lone parents. The belief is a myth, prejudice and total nonsense because the majority of lone parents were working and want to work. These measures will drive them out of work and more lone parents and their children into poverty. The Minister of State, Deputy Gerald Nash, should be ashamed of himself.

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