Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is typical of the Opposition to have a debate about an issue for which it has no solution. It can wax lyrical but it has no solution. As always, it never ceases to amaze me the way the Opposition can grandstand and spout about what we in Government are doing wrong, yet it has nothing to offer. Sinn Féin wants to abolish water and property charges and introduce a wealth tax. The list is endless. If we actually did anything it suggested, how would the State have any money at all to pay for crucial things like welfare allowances and services? The reform of the one-parent family payment is a move that will be positive in the long run.

We cannot continue to condemn one-parent families to a poverty trap. I ask if Sinn Féin wants help one-parent families and to see them leave social welfare. Research has clearly proven that the strongest protection against poverty is sustained employment, to have a job, rather than having one-parent families condemned to economic dependency.

The one-parent family scheme has consistently failed to prevent lone parents from being at risk to poverty. In 2015, lone parents are still two and a half times more at risk of consistent poverty compared to the rest of the population. This is unacceptable. 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. The numbers speak for themselves and as a mother I cannot stand by and neither can this Government stand by and not do anything to help address this serious failure to protect and help one-parent families. We need to provide opportunities for all, not a welfare dependency trap for all.

As the Tánaiste said last night, Sinn Féin is using this motion simply as a cheap populist tactic. I find this motion hypocritical when in Northern Ireland and in many other countries, the equivalent supports stop at the age of five years compared to the proposed age of seven here in the Republic of Ireland. I do not hear Sinn Féin members mentioning that fact.

The purpose of the single parent payment is to help the parent to build financial independence over time. The single parents I meet and work with around the constituency of Dún Laoghaire want to work. I know them because I have taught many of them in my work as a school principal. They want to be financially independent and most important, they want to give their children the best opportunities in life. This Government knows what it is doing. We rebuilt this economy, with the help of the people, from the worst recession this country has ever witnessed. Unemployment has fallen by more than one third since its peak. Throwing money at the problem is not the answer. This Government has introduced and reformed back to work schemes and education and training programmes to help assist single parents and others to get back into the workforce and be financially independent. I recognise that child care needs to be greatly improved in this country for all families. We are quite a bit off from the leading examples of Norway and Sweden but we are making progressive steps in the right direction.

I have proposed an after school child care model whereby schools provide on-site after school care services. Along with the board of management of the school in which I was principal, I launched this child care alternative in 2009. I believe the success of my initiative in one school can provide a blueprint for wider action. Most important, it will help support the very parents who are on the single parent payment to take up a job and thereby increase their likelihood of employment.

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