Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion. For far too long, the Government has been content to let parents battle it out through the courts to enforce child maintenance payments. The Courts Service received almost 9,000 applications for maintenance in 2018. With no State agency in place to support one-parent families, the Government is forcing lone parents who are already in financial hardship to fork out even more money in order to pursue child maintenance. This is unacceptable.

Of the more than 200,000 one-parent families living in the State, 39.9% are at risk of poverty. Some 40% of primary carers are raising children without any financial contribution from another parent. Almost 60% of parents are having to resort to court orders to agree child maintenance payments. A national survey found that a child's needs do not determine the amount paid in 91% of cases. Surely a child's needs should be considered in all cases. Once maintenance payments are made, the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection can cut people's social welfare payments according to how much maintenance they are awarded through the courts. This is outrageous. Lone parents must endure the financial and mental burden of going through the court system only for the Department to then turn around and cut their social welfare payments. This is very much in line with robbing Peter to pay Paul.

I acknowledge that the budget has provided funding for research on this topic, but I want to see progress by the Government to show that it is not just another box-ticking exercise. The Government can do this by committing to the establishment of a State agency. According to SPARK-Ireland, international research has shown that removing child maintenance cases from the courts has resulted in greater child-parent relationships with the non-custodial parents. SPARK-Ireland has called on the Government to examine the Swedish model closely. Under that model, child maintenance payments are taken directly from the non-custodial parent's source of income. This would avoid a situation where the lone parent has to take the non-custodial parent to court to get the payments only for them to stop again after a few weeks, with the lone parent then needing to return to court. This causes a merry-go-round of suffering and stress for parents and children, and it cannot continue.

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