Dáil debates

Wednesday, 9 November 2016

Social Welfare Bill 2016: Second Stage (Resumed)

 

7:35 pm

Photo of Joan CollinsJoan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

My contribution to tonight's debate will concentrate on lone parents. All sections of society were hammered during the recession and the fact that the Minister is giving €5 here and there and increasing jobseeker's allowance for young people under 25 by €2 shows where society has gone. People will never see the full restoration of what they received before the recession in their pay packets or social protection payments because the recession has pulled money out of the pockets of ordinary people while the wealthy get richer. When the Minister of State in the House, Deputy Finian McGrath, was on this side of the House he would have had such ideas and would have echoed those sentiments. There has to be a different concept of how society is run. Brexit and what has happened in the USA - and may happen in other countries - are an indictment of people's frustration about how they have been disrespected and disenfranchised. The system that has maintained itself for the past 20 years cannot do so any more yet trade deals are being put in place that may affect people's public services even more, by allowing businesses to challenge Governments if they wish to reverse decisions that affect profits, such as decisions to increase minimum wages.

Social protection could have alleviated the problems faced by lone parents without costing too much money. SPARK attended a committee meeting yesterday morning and its representatives made the general point that Ireland has worryingly high child poverty rates. The overall consistent poverty rate in Ireland is 8% but for children it is 11.2%. According to a SILC report of 2014, when breaking the rates down by household composition a different picture appears and the consistent poverty rate for children in lone parent families is 22.1%, while it is 7.9% for two-parent families with fewer than four children. Any discussion about reducing child poverty must, therefore, focus on children in lone-parent families and two-parent families with fewer than four children.

All people under 18 are legally seen as minors and the policy that forces a parent with sole responsibility for raising a teenager to work full time is not in the child's best interest. A lot has been written about changes to one-parent family payments, which now stop once the youngest child turns seven. People put out the line that this is in accordance with international best practice and point out that, internationally, parents can lose support when children turn three or five. However, although parents are expected to seek training or a job before the child turns seven, once they do so the financial and other supports available to enable their participation cease. In the UK a lone parent working 12 hours a week is entitled to working credits. They can breach the benefits caps and are entitled to higher housing benefit to reward them for working but that is not even being looked at in this country. Work is seen as a route out of poverty but for lone parents in Ireland the infrastructure is not in place to ensure work pays. The recent changes in Ireland cut the income of parents working for 20 hours on the minimum wage by 17% in many cases, due to rules around rent supplement and high child care costs for many lone parents. This loss means they are financially better off not working and that is the irony of the policies that were put in place in the past number of years. Far from encouraging economic independence, this policy is trapping lone parents into long-term social welfare dependency.

Changes to one-parent family payments has exasperated lone parents looking to access all levels of education. In the programme for partnership Government there is a commitment to publishing recommendations from an independent report commissioned to identify the barriers to success in higher education for lone parents in advance of budget 2017. The report has not been published in the timeframe agreed and the barriers will remain in place for at least another year. Lone parents accessing ETB and SOLAS courses have been forced to drop out or face financial losses. Lone parents are paid a training allowance instead of a primary social welfare payment when doing these courses. Many courses operate on a clock-in basis and any time missing or late attendances result in a financial penalty. This system does not accommodate the dual role of a lone parent. Many courses start at 8.30 a.m., which does not facilitate a lone parent who has to drop a child at school. If parents have to stay at home to nurse a sick child they lose a full day's pay, likewise if they must bring a child to a dental or medical appointment. A lone parent who participates in these courses is paid a minimum of €15 per week for child care out of the weekly qualifying child increase of €29.80. This requires a significant investment in the course but the risk that they lose money when a child is sick is unfair and an additional barrier which is forcing lone parents out of training at a time when Intreo offices are pushing them into a course. The irony of these situations is unbelievable.

Lone parents on rent supplement have no access to higher education unless they transfer to the back-to-education allowance, BTA. However, they cannot receive the maintenance portion of SUSI if they are on the BTA. The SUSI grant is completely necessary to support the additional transport and child care costs associated with attending college and, in effect, a lone parent's access is determined by his or her housing status and this is discriminatory. The Department of Social Protection has confirmed that lone parents on jobseeker's transition can do postgraduate studies but in practice local offices are suspending payments for those who are studying at postgraduate level and this has to be addressed. Parents are being told they must stop studying or forfeit payments. The purpose of the policy was to encourage activation and it is therefore essential that all Intreo offices are fully aware that lone parents are entitled to study while on jobseeker's transition. In my own area of Ballyfermot, a young woman went in to collect her JST last Friday but she is doing a masters course and was told she would not get the JST until the course was stopped. We intervened to say it was allowed but she was nearly a week without money in her pocket, which is absolutely outrageous when a person is already on a low income. All Intreo offices should know the rules and regulations around payments.

It is important to give an overview of what is happening to lone parents. They were targeted during the recession and the austerity and they were picked off, one by one, as were people with disabilities who could not fight back to oppose the cuts. I hope that, as happened with the Right2Water campaign, there will be people organising on the streets and there will be real change so that we do not have the same tired politics of which people are resentful.

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