Darragh O'Brien (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and thank him for outlining the rationale for some of the changes in the Bill. We will not support the Bill. While we are not opposed to the back-to-work family dividend as a key measure of the Bill where families will retain the full qualified child increase, it is important to note that the Government has not gone far enough in some of the measures to row back on previous cuts to lone-parent payments. We will oppose the Bill but we will table amendment on Committee Stage with a view to improving the Bill.

The Minister of State has outlined the activation measures and we all want to ensure that all parents, but lone parents in particular, get an opportunity to go back to work. However, the changes to eligibility introduced by the Minister for Social Protection in the past three social welfare Bills that were enacted targeted this sector for cuts, with significant decreases in lone-parent payments. While the proposed changes are welcome, they will affect about 800 families, but another 10,000 families have been negatively affected under previous legislation because of changes in eligibility. More than 10,000 families are already working and are due to lose a substantial portion of their income - about 25% of income for a lone parent working 20 hours on the minimum wage. The Minister wants to give other lone parents the opportunity to get back into the workforce, and I agree with that, but why penalise those who have already gone back to work by cutting their payments?

The Minister has failed to address the plight of lone parents who are in the middle of studying who, from July 2015, will lose their entitlement to a grant awarded by SUSI, with losses ranging from €45 to €113 per week. At the time of their introduction in April 2012,the Minister, Deputy Burton, referring to the changes as reforms, said they were introduced to encourage the activation of lone parents into employment and education. Again she failed to explain why these reforms punish only those lone parents who are already fulfilling that objective, that is, those who are already working. She said she would not proceed with these changes until they were accompanied by what she termed the Scandinavian child care model, which we do not have. There have been no additional child care supports and the Minister is proceeding with the changes.

We have no difficulty with some parts of the Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill but we have to take a stand against the changes that have been made already. The Minister of State mentioned figures going back to 2004, showing that lone parents were more at risk of deprivation, but from the research that groups such as One Family and SPARK have done, more than 60% of lone parents, and by extension their children, are experiencing deprivation and poverty now. The measures in the Bill are a way of rowing back on some of the cuts that have been introduced in the past four years. At the time I could not understand the reason the Department of Social Protection focused specifically on lone parents, cutting the benefits repeatedly, changing the criteria for eligibility as well as reducing the age of children who will be eligible. The changes from July are way out of kilter with many other cuts that have been brought in by the Government.The Minister refers to them as reform, and while I agree with him on one point, that everybody should be given the opportunity to work, why change the existing payments for those who are already working and are doing what the Department wants?

We will be tabling a significant number of amendments on Committee Stage and we will debate them at that stage. Before the pervious budget, we made a very strong pre-budget submission in order to help ease the transition of people who are long term unemployed and face losing their benefits on returning to work. We proposed allowing persons in receipt of jobseeker's allowance for more than one year to retain increases in respect of qualified children for a period of a year following their return to employment.We have put forward proposals which I intend to put forward, with my colleagues, on Committee Stage. We will debate them in more detail at that stage.

I thank the Minister of State for coming here and outlining some of the rationale behind the changes being brought forward. The initiative that will positively affect 800 families is welcome. However, we do not support the Bill because the Government has not gone far enough to redress some of the very unfair and disproportionate cuts it has brought forward over the past four Social Welfare Bills. To recap, we will deal with the amendments on Committee Stage and I thank the Minister of State for his attendance.