Dáil debates

Tuesday, 22 October 2019

10:50 pm

Photo of John BradyJohn Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies who spoke in support of Sinn Féin's motion. It is really welcome. It is unfortunate that the Government has indicated it will abstain. That is a disappointment not just for Sinn Féin but, more importantly, for the lone parent families who are looking on and hoping that some of the Minister's positive words recently would translate into positive actions. While the Minister of State, Deputy McGrath, rattled off a range of benefits in his contribution, these are available to many parents in the State and are not limited to lone parents. The Minister of State failed to touch on the Thatcherite cuts to the one-parent family payment that the Fine Gael Government introduced with a Labour Party Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, and the impact those cuts have had on one-parent families. These measures are irrelevant to the motion because we are talking about the non-payment of maintenance.

The Minister, Deputy Regina Doherty, always opens any response when it relates to child maintenance by detailing the legal obligation under the Family Law Acts. I am disappointed the Minister is not in the Chamber to respond personally to the motion and the questions asked. This legal obligation clearly means nothing. We know that because the majority of lone parents are not receiving maintenance for their children. Instead, lone parents are left to struggle and to live in poverty. The Minister has a tendency to dismiss the issue of child maintenance as a matter for the Minister for Justice and Equality, yet it is the policies of her Department, not the Department of Justice and Equality, that have condemned many lone parent families to poverty. The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection is able to pursue the non-custodial parent to cover its own costs for the one-parent family payment but has no interest in collecting maintenance for the children involved. What about the cost of a lone parent raising children alone?

The Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, also spoke about the liable relatives unit, but I note he did not share the figures outlined by my colleague, Deputy Quinlivan, because these figures are embarrassing. The liable relatives unit is wholly dysfunctional. It does not work. The Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, spoke about the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty's actions on the issue of child maintenance as if she has been tackling the issue for years. Until September 2019, not once did the Minister agree to examine the process currently in place in order to seek child maintenance. I spent more than two years asking her about it over and over again in this Chamber. Let us not pretend the Minister has been working hard to tackle this issue. She spent those two years trying to pawn the issue off on the Department of Justice and Equality. It has to be said the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty, has done nothing to date to tackle the issues faced by lone parents with maintenance. That is a fact.

It is really disappointing that the Government has chosen to abstain on this critical motion. The Minister says money has been set aside in the budget and that is welcome, but we do not need guidelines. Lone parent families need a statutory child maintenance service that has been shown will cost a very small amount of money to establish, about €7 million. That cost would be so important to the many families out there that are driven into poverty because of the failure of this Government and of successive Governments to put in place a maintenance service that would help to ensure those children are lifted out of poverty, using child maintenance as a means to do so. I ask and urge the Government again not to abstain on this, but to support it and work together collectively, because no one has a monopoly on this issue and no one wants to turn it into a political football. We can all work together on this, but abstaining sends out the wrong message to lone parent families that desperately need this.

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