Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will attempt to be brief to allow some time for the Ministers to come back on my questions. There is no doubt that the pandemic has had an extraordinary and adverse impact on our labour market as well as broader society. Our response in terms of social protection measures has had to be equally extraordinary. As the Minister detailed earlier, the cost to the Exchequer for the PUP is in excess of €5.5 billion and climbing all the while. This is necessary.

In a broad sense, it has been effective. The ERSI has found that the PUP and the various iterations of employment income supports have been effective in cushioning families at the lower end, that is to say, those at the bottom 40% of the income distribution, from income losses during the pandemic. I am acutely aware that this broad-stroke analysis glosses over many individual stories of financial hardship that all of us are dealing with in our inboxes and constituency clinics, whether they are conducted online or wherever.

We know that this pandemic has not affected all of society equally. We know it disproportionately affects lower paid jobs, whether in retail, hospitality or the service industry jobs that have disappeared from the economy. We know that in terms of employment, younger people have had to bear the brunt in the effects on seasonal or part-time employment and in terms of their education, college experience and social lives. The impact of this should not be discounted.

I believe the Covid-19 responses have demonstrated an extraordinary act of intergenerational solidarity. A generation far less likely to feel the worst physical effects of the virus is making extraordinary sacrifices to protect our older and more vulnerable communities. I hope that on the far side of this pandemic, whenever we get there, we remember that act of solidarity when we come to addressing the types of issues that weigh most heavily on our young people. The climate crisis and the housing crisis come to mind in particular in that context.

I wish to turn to the question of lone parents and the impact the lockdown is having on this cohort. Lone parents are one of the cohorts in our society often farthest removed from the labour force. Among the key findings of the 2017 report from the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection on lone parents was the fact that one-parent families endure the highest consistent poverty of any group in society. The figure is a little over 26%. Lone parents suffer the highest rates of deprivation, the rate being a shocking 57.9%. Children in one-parent families are three times as likely to live in consistent poverty than families with two adults.

Measures were introduced in the budget for 2021 aimed at this cohort. The increase for a qualified child, IQC, rate is chief among these. We can reasonably anticipate that the pandemic will have exacerbated this situation, for example, with the lack of childcare, the closure of schools and the evaporation of part-time working opportunities. All these serve to create a perfect storm for lone-parent families.

Are we undertaking the monitoring and reporting of lone parents in respect of education and poverty levels as recommended in the 2017 report? Is there data on the impact of our Covid-19 response on this cohort? Is this being monitored in real time? Is a plan being developed for the far side of this pandemic? How can the impacts be addressed once we come out of the Covid-19 crisis, in terms of the income impacts on this cohort and in providing access to opportunities in employment and education to better the lot of lone-parent families?

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