Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I begin by commending Deputy Kerrane on this legislation that clearly sets out to improve the situation for people who very often find themselves in dire poverty and in very serious situations. Lone parents are, as has previously been said, one of the groups in our society who often find it difficult to survive and manage on a very low income.

I was reading the Minister of State's speech and was quite alarmed when he referred to the changes that happened between 2013 and 2015 as "reforms". For those who experienced those changes they were not a reform that was positive but one that was very negative because it removed income from a huge number of people across the length and breadth of the country. I remember being contacted at the time by many loan parents who were devastated by the situation they found themselves in when their payments were taken away from them simply because their child had got a little older. In most cases their children had got a little more expensive to keep, yet the State found its way to doing this. If that is what the Minster of State considers reform then we hope the next review will be a damn sight better than the last time Government called it reform.

We have legislation that was, as Deputy Kerrane mentioned, brought forward by Fianna Fáil, I think about three or four years ago. It is ironic that in the particular marriage the parties have over on the Government side of the House this legislation is clearly a lone child with a lone parent that is not being embraced by all parties of Government. It is now being dealt with the same way it was when Fianna Fáil proposed the legislation. The Government is kicking it down the road and kicking it to touch. This set of people are in very dire circumstances. Everybody acknowledges that and the Minister of State acknowledged in his own speech that there is a dire need to change the situation in place at the moment because the system simply does not work for so many people. We are in a context of rising costs for everyone. Home heating oil, transport and all those costs are rising for everybody across society and are especially acute for people on the edge of the poverty line, which is particularly the case for loan parents. Despite this, the Government decides that rather than taking this Bill for the small improvement it would make, embracing it and running with it, it will instead kick it down the road for six months. We all know even if the Minister of State decided to accept it now it would be six months at least before it would be enacted and in place. We are talking about over a year or maybe much longer before we see a situation where the changes required in this Bill come into force.

The other point concerns the courts system and the huge trauma it is. I deal all the time with people who come to me and have had that experience from all walks of life. They have found the court experience very difficult. It is mainly women. These women may be in a situation where they have a child and there was possibly a break-up from what has often been an abusive relationship. They find themselves having to go to court and having to go through all that again. They know full well the chances of getting maintenance from the person who has abandoned them with their child is very low, but that they must go to court to get the assistance of the State is an indictment of the State's position in regard to this. It needs to be reconsidered, and very quickly. I recently came across the case of a lone parent in my and the Minister of State's constituency. She is a young woman with a child who has a disability. She explained the situation to me. She talked to me about getting services for the child. She talked about the difficulty she had in that she was trying to manage on the lone parent payment and fighting all the time to get services in the school for her child and to get her child to appointments for this, that and the other. Everything she faced in her life was as struggle. It is a battle. The Minister of State comes across the very same type of people on a regular basis. We have legislation in front of us that can do something about that. It is not going to put a huge cost on the State. We are not talking about creating some difficulty here.

Rather, we are discussing something that could relieve a little of the stress for a young woman in such circumstances who has to go to court to try to get some maintenance or has to try to get a lone parent payment from the State. It is a scandal that the Minister of State would suggest in the Chamber that the right thing to do would be to give this more time. People in these situations do not have the time to wait for them to be resolved and they do not resolve themselves. These people live in anguish and poverty as they try to survive and battle day in, day out. Those of us who are in a better position should at least have the common decency and humanity to do something about it. Here we have an opportunity to do so but the Government is refusing. That is difficult to take.

I suggest that the Minister of State speak to his colleagues in Fianna Fáil, who were the first ones to propose this legislation, and work out a solution and that the Government reconsider the matter, drop its amendment and allow the Bill to move forward. Getting it through the Houses will take a great deal of time. By the time it enters into force, the report, which is supposed to be published at Easter, will be on the table for consideration. If it is a sensible report constructed by sensible people, then it will reach the conclusion that every other sensible person has reached and say that we need to do something about this situation and deliver fully for people in these circumstances.

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