Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this Bill as a long overdue reform of the social welfare system in relation to maintenance.

It is nothing short of outrageous that for decades lone mothers have been legally obliged to pursue fathers for maintenance by the Department of Social Protection and are then penalised by the Department when the father does not pay court-approved maintenance. That is because the Department deducts maintenance approved by the courts from the mother's social welfare payments regardless of whether she actually received it or not. Her reward for months or even years of chasing a father through the courts for maintenance is to have the amount approved by the court deducted from her own payment.

Submissions to the child maintenance review group from women's rights and lone parent's organisations, such as SPARK and Women's Aid, have spelled out the incredible injustice of that situation. It is yet another example of the State working in a misogynistic way to victimise lone parents. Not satisfied with placing the full burden of responsibility on them to raise their children alone, with very little help from the State as regards housing or childcare, its maintenance regime has directly penalised lone parents for raising a family by themselves. All of the women's rights and children's rights organisations have told us for years that this is grossly unfair on lone parents and that it contributes to child poverty and homelessness, especially as maintenance is deducted from rent supplement. It has taken all these years, however, for the Government to finally act.

I hope this is only a first step in removing every last vestige of misogyny and discrimination against lone parents from our social welfare system. Unfortunately, plenty of those elements are still in our system, including the utter disgrace that in 2024 social welfare inspectors can still turn up at a woman's door and invade her privacy to effectively check for men under the bed. A 2020 investigation by the Irish Examinerfound that: "In many cases the women are left feeling small and worthless. The Social Welfare inspectors have all the power, and in some case they abuse it. The mums claiming the single parent allowance are left between a rock and a hard place - make a complaint and risk losing a payment, or just stay quiet and take it." The newspaper spoke to women who said: "... inspectors would come to their homes unannounced, searching each room, sometimes opening wardrobes looking for men's clothes and questioning them about cars parked outside." Rather than outlawing this misogyny, which reeks of the squinting-windows Catholic Ireland of old, the Department continues it. Between 2018 and 2020 alone, 32,559 recipients of the one-parent family payment scheme were examined by social welfare inspectors, 2,327 were cut off, and another 3,665 had their payment rate reduced on review.

To return to the subject matter of the Bill, it is unfortunately the case that even if 100% of child maintenance were collected, there would still be significant poverty and inequality in this country. The tens of thousands of children in two-parent families who are living in poverty, despite receiving financial support from both of their parents, are proof of that. As a socialist, I do not believe that children's standard of living should be dependent on how wealthy their parents are. A genuinely left, socialist government would directly eliminate child poverty. It would provide high-quality, universal public services, such as housing, childcare, healthcare and public transport, free of charge to all. It would increase social welfare payments such that they would provide a decent standard of living and it would legislate for living wages and mandatory trade union recognition so that workers could fight for higher wages. That would benefit all children, regardless of their parents' income or family circumstances. This would be funded by taxing big business and the wealthy and taking key sectors of the economy, such as the banks, into democratic public ownership.

Oxfam's wealth report, published earlier this week, showed how a tax on the millionaires and billionaires in this country could raise even more than €9 billion every year. It showed that just two billionaires in this country have the same wealth as 50% of the country or half the entire population. That €9 billion alone would pay for abolishing childcare fees, increasing all basic social welfare payments and pensions to €350, and making medicines and public transport free. A wealth tax would raise much more funds to abolish child poverty than placing attachment orders on people's social welfare payments as the Government proposes to do in the near future.

I welcome the provisions in the Bill that repeal the Department's responsibility to pursue what are called "liable relatives" for maintenance. This will be dealt with separately by the Department of Justice. We will watch very closely to see what is proposed in that regard. I clearly state in advance of that, while we wait, People Before Profit will not support punitive measures, such as the proposals for suspended sentences, to be used against people who do not pay maintenance. We fear this could have a serious impact on people on low incomes and vulnerable people suffering from addiction or mental health problems. We do not consider that sort of punitive approach to be the answer.

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