Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will reply to Question No. 10, and to Question No. 36.

The CSO Survey on Income and Living Conditions, SILC, for 2016 shows that for lone parent households, the consistent poverty rate is 24.6%, down from 26.2% in 2015 and the deprivation rate fell from 57.9% in 2015 to 50.1% in 2016. However, the Deputy is right; the at-risk-of-poverty rate increased from 36.2% in 2015 to 40.2% in 2016.

I hope we would all acknowledge that the best way to tackle poverty, particularly among lone parents, is helping them find a job. The recently published Indecon report shares this view. The report found that the changes to the one-parent family payment scheme made over the last number of years increased employment and reduced welfare dependency. It also found that the changes increased the probability of employment and higher employment income for lone parents. The report also concluded that assisting lone parents to enhance skills also needs to be seen as a key objective as low-paid employment, which is something none of us wants any of our people to aspire to, will not on its own ensure a reduction in the risk of poverty. What we want for people who do not have a job is a job, a better job and then a career. We need to ensure that the training and support services, particularly for lone parents who historically would not have been working in any real numbers, provide them with a career path so they can get decent paid employment and not just part-time minimum wage employment.

In 2017, further budget improvements were implemented and I have continued to emphasise improvements for lone parents in particular. I hope my Department's social impact assessments of all budgets for 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 are an indicator of this improvement. These show a cumulative increase of €36.75 in the average weekly household income of employed lone parents and €33.60 for unemployed lone parents. This compares favourably with a weekly increase of €34.45 for the average household.

Budget measures recently announced which will take effect from 29 March 2018, specifically the increases to the income disregard, the primary rate and the increase for qualified child rate, will see a lone parent on the one-parent family payment or jobseeker's transitional payment who is working 15 hours a week on the national minimum wage better off by nearly €1,000 per year.

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