Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

That depends on how far the Minister goes. There was an increase in the homemaker's tax credit in the previous budget but it was buttons. Fundamentally, the message from the Government has been it will support people who care for other people's children and it will pay for it, but if people care for their own children it does not care and those people do not matter. This needs to change at scale. This cannot just be a marginal few bob here, a few bob in the next budget and a few bob promised in five or ten years' time. The reason I was interested in the line in the Minister's paper, where he stated we must value caring work, is I believe it is a quintessential central economic issue that we must change our ways. The Minister is right that it is a better economy. Elizabeth Warren has described what happens to economies which are tied into supporting only one type of option. They end up with consequences in property prices and the dual income trap about which she has written. It is bad economics as well as being fundamentally wrong.

I would very much like to see the homemaker's tax credit increased, but there would be people left out, such as lone parents, people below the tax income and single-parent families. It does not address all of the inequities that exist. To go into the detail of it, and I will not negotiate here but I want to give an idea to those parents who have an acute interest in it, what scale of change would the Minister make to the tax credit? How would the Minister address some of the inequities for those other groups, such as lone parents, single parents and people below the tax net, so they are not discriminated against?

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