John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In research carried out by Mandate, one in ten people are experiencing food poverty, which is nearly half a million citizens. We have a crisis in housing, healthcare and education. We have families struggling to feed their children and heat their homes. Poverty is rising among children and pensioners as well as among people with disabilities and carers. Lone parents are among the most vulnerable and impoverished in the country with 63% of one-parent family households experiencing enforced deprivation. Homelessness is a greater threat than ever before. At any one time, two thirds of families in emergency accommodation are lone parent families. The rationale put forward for the cuts to the lone parent allowance was to incentivise lone parents to seek more hours at work, but in the absence of affordable child care and legislation enabling workers to seek more hours, these cuts are an attack on the living standards of lone parents. We are still waiting on the Scandinavian child care model which was constantly referred to by Deputy Joan Burton. Will the Minister be able to give us an update on that child care proposal?

Sinn Féin called on the Government to reverse the changes to the lone parent allowance in a Private Members' motion on the eve of the change in July 2015 and the Labour Party refused to back down. Today, Labour Party Deputies are standing up whinging about cuts as if they played no part in standing over the harshest of cuts ever seen in this country. Where is the recovery for lone parents? There is none; they are certainly not living in a utopia.

A man from Baltinglass in my constituency of Wicklow contacted my office last week. He is caring for his daughter and has been told he will have to wait 19 weeks until his application for carer's allowance is even examined. Thanking him for his sacrifice in turning the economy around will not get him the carer's allowance he is entitled to more quickly. The reality is that carers right across the country have nothing left to give. Carers, who save the State over €4 billion each year, are experiencing unprecedented hardship. Is that their sacrifice? Where is the recovery for carers? There is none for carers; they do not live in the Minister's utopia.

In 2015, the CSO reported that there are 755,570 people living in poverty in Ireland, which is a rise of 55,000 since the Minister's party, Fine Gael, and Labour came into office in 2011. Over 230,000 of these are children. What is the Government doing about this? Even the Minister's targets to reduce child poverty had to be revised from taking 70,000 children out of poverty to 97,000 by 2020. How can any Government stand idly by when children are going hungry in 2016? This has not happened by accident. It is the result of several successive regressive budgets started off by Fianna Fáil. It has been caused by the Government's own polices. Yet, the Government continues to sit on its hands on this issue while organisations such as St. Vincent de Paul are left to spend €7 million a year providing for people who are the most needy in this State. We see thousands queueing for food parcels at Dublin's Capuchin day centre. In Cork, the Penny Dinners feed 1,400 people per week, which is up 55% in a year. Children should never pay the price and should never suffer the severe deprivation they are suffering today thanks to the Government's policies and austerity agenda. Where is the recovery for children? There is no recovery for children.

Last week, there was a real opportunity for Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to make some effort in tackling the housing crisis through Sinn Féin's Bill on rent certainty, something Fianna Fáil had their part-----

See this speech in context