Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is most welcome. I thank her for being present to hear what I have to say on the issue I have raised on the Adjournment: It reads:

The need for the Minister for Social Protection to explain why she plans to press ahead next week, on Thursday, 26 June, with measures that will disincentivise up to 9,100 one-parent families from working and in so doing act counter to stated Government policy.

This measure was introduced in the budget for 2012. I voted for it, but when we debated the provisions of that budget, the Minister accepted that one-parent families were a group at risk of poverty. I am not a lone voice in saying this and there is substantial evidence to support it. At the time the Minister said she would not implement the measure until a Scandinavian style child care model was in place. That model is not in place, yet this measure is due to be put in place next week. Some 9,100 one-parent families in receipt of the one-parent family payment will have their payments ended and will be placed in the new jobseeker's assist payment scheme, a basic requirement of which is that a person must be available to work part time. I support this in principle. It is absolutely fine in theory, but from what I have heard - I have met a number of one-parent families - it is not working in practice.
The recipients of one-parent family payments are men and women who are parenting alone due to separation, divorce, the death of a partner, relationship breakdown and, in some cases, domestic violence. Only last week the Minister of State and I both know that as a national collective we were wringing our hands at our social history. We were experiencing remorse and anger over the thousands of babies of single mothers who apparently had been discarded cruelly and largely against their mothers' wishes. This time last year we were celebrating because the women who had been in Magdalen laundries were finally being awarded compensation having been submitted to a lifetime of torture and punishment for having a child outside marriage. Today, however, single parents are about to be plunged into an evermore complicated and restricted regime of double binds and increasing poverty. Single parents who have been out of work for a minimum of seven years are expected to gain ready access to work in the current jobs market which largely favours interns under the JobBridge and JobPath programmes. A new lone parent whose child is already seven years old is not entitled to the jobseeker's assist payment and must receive the jobseeker's allowance straightaway. The person concerned will be required to take part in activation measures, while not having access to child care. That is the crux of the matter. How can it be truly said that parents are available for work if they do not have access to free child care? There must have been an assumption that people who were parenting alone had parents or friends available for free child minding. We all know that is not the case. People who are parenting alone are still waiting for the Scandinavian style child care model, promised in budget 2012 and for which I voted on the basis that it would be in place. What we voted for has not been put in place.
Let me give some examples of cases in which a supposition will be made that a lone parent has managed to find a real job, not an internship. In my first example a lone parent who will be in receipt of the new jobseeker's assist payment, being introduced next week, is working 15 hours a week. That person's income will be down €19 a week, from €324 to €305. The payment of €324 includes the one-parent family payment and the jobseeker's scheme element, in addition to a child allowance of €29.80.