Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister to the House to debate this Bill. I welcome too his recent statement that he would reconsider the lone parent payment to see whether it can be reformed and modernised to meet the needs of lone parents. I look forward to hearing his views on the matter when the review is completed.

The Minister may need to consider my point at interdepartmental level because social welfare affects many other Departments. Much of the work of the Department of Social and Family Affairs is administrative, paying out the schemes established through various consolidated Social Welfare Acts. I encountered a case in my area which exemplifies how unfair the system is to lone parents. A woman with a small child, and who had been out of education for eight years but wanted to return to third level education, sought a maintenance grant from the local authority. She was prevented from getting it because under the rules of the maintenance scheme, applied by the local authority, the total income in her house was taken into account. She lives with her parents.

This is an example of a young mother who did not go onto the council housing list but stayed at home with her family who received a grant from the local authority to extend the house for her and her child where they could have her parents' support. The State, however, came down hard on her because her parents' income was added to hers in assessing her eligibility for the maintenance grant. The lone parent payment is her sole income. This demonstrates how unfair the system is to lone parents. When they try to better themselves and improve their education they are prevented from doing so.

The Tánaiste was quite honest when she said a few years ago that for young mothers in particular it would make sense if they could stay at home with their families. This is particularly true for teenage mothers. A major problem in Dublin is that when young women are housed in housing estates they are picked on and their property is vandalised. A sub-culture exists around this problem.

In the example I have cited, the State supported this family to help the young mother yet when she tried some years later to get a grant to improve herself, the State refused it because the total income in the household was assessed.

While this is not an issue for the Department of Social and Family Affairs, the Minister needs to tackle it because his Department's decisions have implications for the Department of Education and Science and others. It requires several Ministers to work on such an initiative. Perhaps the Minister will take this up with the Minister for Education and Science because this is discrimination against lone parents who do their best and work hard to find new economic opportunities for their children.