Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I thank Senators for their contributions. When I first came to this House in my role as Minister, a number of Senators were slightly disbelieving and wary regarding the commitment to reverse the decision on the minimum wage but I reversed it in the first legislation I introduced. The important aspect of that was to help people on very low pay. We have to take account of the context of where the country is at. We are in economic difficulties and the country was signed by Fianna Fáil into a deal with the IMF in late 2010. We have to work our way out of the other side of that deal. We are spending more than a €1 billion on payments to lone parents and the critical question is whether that billion expenditure is giving us the kind of outcomes we want for the parents and, more particularly, the children.

Yesterday, the ESRI published a fairly weighty document, one of a series, the latest study on poverty in Ireland, and it indicated what most people here know and have reflected in their contributions that the children who are most at risk of poverty are those in households where the adults are not at work. In regard to children at risk of poverty, the most important and critical issue is the education level of the mother. That is not my finding but of the three researchers, Watson, Maitre and Whelan, who undertook this large and generally well regarded comprehensive survey and report, published yesterday. We must ask ourselves why they bring forward this evidence over and over again and what we can do in the context that this country correctly spends a great deal of money in regard to welfare. Can we get better leverage of the money we spend to give people better outcomes? It comes down to that. That is what we all have to ask ourselves.

I appreciate all the genuine comments made by Senators about their desire to support lone parents. I believe that view is shared across members of all political parties and none. I was the person in the 1990s who brought in a right for lone parents in the teeth of considerable opposition and cynicism at the time. Older people here may remember that in the early 1990s if a person was in receipt of a lone parent's allowance, that person could not study or work. It was simply not permitted. One of the changes I introduced to try to impact on reducing poverty in Ireland was to allow young women in particular, who had a baby early on in their lives, to return to school or college and continue their education. That change in Ireland, no more than the changes that Frank Cluskey brought in 40 years ago, was hugely helpful in giving people opportunities.

We have come to the stage where we have to ask ourselves what is it we need to do to use the money we are spending in a better way to get better outcomes. The savings involved in the amendment we are discussing are minimal. As has been said, investment in preschool and after school care will be many multiples of those savings. I want to reiterate for Senators the timespan involved because some people think that some of what is proposed will happen next week. For people who have been lone parenting prior to April 2011, the operative dates for the proposed changes that will apply are as follows: the age limit will still be under 18 years in 2012, under 17 years in 2013, under 16 years in 2014 and under 7 years in 2015 and 2016. For parents who have since come into lone parenting, the age limit for the youngest child will be under 14 year in 2011 and 2012, under 12 years in 2013, under 10 years in 2014 and under 7 years in 2015 and 2016. We are talking about quite a long period of transformation.