Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

At the best of times being a parent is an enormous challenge in having to provide for oneself and one's kids. It is particularly difficult for lone parents who do so without the support of a partner, without a second income and without someone to share in the burden, cost and time taken by childcare.

To answer the Deputy's question, we are helping all parents, but especially lone parents, to improve their living conditions by creating jobs. The number of lone parents who are working has increased. The rate of unemployment is down by almost two thirds and the Deputy will know that it is down again today. We are increasing welfare payments that had been cut back in the past. They are being restored with an increase kicking in to the one-parent family payment and the jobseeker's transition payment in a few weeks' time. We have introduced the working family payment to replace the family income supplement, which allows lone parents who are working to keep more of the money they earn and to have their income topped up so they can avoid poverty.

We have reduced the costs of childcare and we will further enhance that with the introduction of the affordable childcare scheme later in the year.

We are increasing pay. The minimum wage has increased and pay has been restored for people who are public servants. It is also increasing across the private sector. We are reducing the costs of medicines and prescription charges are being reduced. General practitioner, GP, visits, which are already free to all children under the age of six, will be extended to a further 100,000 people from April onwards. Those are the measures we are taking to reduce the costs of living, to assist lone parents into work and to ensure they have more money in their pockets.

We are also focusing very much on education. We have, for example, restored the costs of education grant, and as a result record numbers of people from non-traditional backgrounds are now participating in higher education.

I have immense respect for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and have worked with it on many occasions; especially when I was the Minister for Social Protection, but I do not believe the report that was issued today tells the full picture. This morning I asked for the statistics from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, which collects the official statistics on poverty in Ireland. The CSO figures show that the consistent poverty rate - the official measure of poverty in Ireland - jumped from 18.4% in 2012 to 26.3% in 2013. Since 2013, however, for each of the past four years, consistent poverty and deprivation among lone parents has actually gone down. It fell to 23.1 % in 2014, there was a slight increase to 23.2% after that and then 20.7% in 2017. The most recent figures we have are for 2017 and they are less than those for 2013. This demonstrates that the policies we have implemented in helping people get back to work, helping them into education, improving welfare and reducing the costs of childcare are working. I predict that when we see the 2018 figures they will have improved again.

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