Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

At the outset, I thank Senators Zappone, van Turnhout, Mary Ann O'Brien and Mac Conghail for raising this important issue. The one-parent family payment scheme has played an important role in providing income support to lone parents since its introduction in its present form in 1997. The period from 1997 to 2010 saw the number of recipients increase by 50% and the annual expenditure increase by approximately 330% or €770 million. However, despite significant levels of investment, in which the State spent in excess of €1 billion per annum for a five-year period from 2008 to 2012 and notwithstanding the good points on which everyone agrees, the scheme has consistently failed to prevent lone parents being significantly more at risk of consistent poverty than the population as a whole. This means the outcomes for lone parents and in particular for their children are significantly worse than for other people in the population.

According to the most recent survey on income and living conditions, 23% of lone parents are at risk of consistent poverty. This is 2.5 times greater than the population as a whole and this figure is simply not acceptable. This is not a new phenomenon, however, and it has been a feature of the scheme since its inception. In 2004, at the height of the boom, lone parents were more than 4.5 times at risk of consistent poverty than the population as a whole. We cannot afford to keep doing the same things and expect a different outcome. Previous to the reforms to the scheme, Ireland was on its own in how we supported lone parents. Lone parents could have been on the one-parent family payment scheme until their youngest child turned 18, or 22 if they were in full-time education. Other countries have moved away from providing long-duration income support towards a shorter, more active engagement approach with more support. For example, in New Zealand, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the North of Ireland, the equivalent supports for lone parents cease when the youngest child reaches the age of five. I acknowledge and commend the many lone parents who have engaged in employment in order to improve the outcomes for their families. However, as somebody who works extensively with lone parents and organisations dealing with lone parents, I constantly meet lone parents, particularly women, who may have left education, training and work until they were in their late 40s or early 50s and then found, as has been described eloquently by Senators Zappone and van Turnhout, that they could not get well paid employment. That is the crux of the matter. If one does not get into education, training and work experience, followed by employment, before one's late 40s or 50s, it is very difficult to do so subsequently. So many say to me that they only wish they had gone back to school and got training and qualifications at a much earlier stage in their life. On that important fact, there is considerable agreement on both sides of this House.

Not all lone parents were in a position to get back into employment. Many have been in receipt of one-parent family payment for 18 or 22 years - maybe another ten years if they have two or three children with more than a ten-year gap between them - without ever working or engaging in education or training. This represents a significant portion of anyone's working life, and in many instances it creates a welfare trap for those who are just as bright, industrious and hardworking, and, indeed, intelligent, as anyone else in the country. They deserve the best of opportunities in getting into education, training and well paid employment. Since I became involved in this area, which was 20 years ago, that has always been my approach. I have seen the impact on those who have not been able to be involved in education, training and bettering their life opportunities. It meant that lone parents in that situation were so distant from the labour force that they found it impossible to secure well paid employment when their payments ceased as their children went into adulthood. By not proactively engaging with lone parents, the State, in effect, is consigning these individuals and their families to a life of welfare dependency and putting them at an increased risk of poverty. Put simply, the one-parent family payment in its previous guise has to a certain extent failed lone parents and their families. It has provided income support to lone-parent families, but it also has ensured that some of these families are more likely to suffer from consistent poverty than the population as a whole. That is why we had to change our approach to supporting lone parents.

As Tánaiste and Labour Party leader, I have always believed that the best protection against poverty is secure and fairly paid work, and there is no doubt that the road to that is through education, training and work experience. The Labour Party in government is focused on providing opportunities for all people. We need to provide for greater levels of opportunity for lone parents and their children. We need to have a more active engagement to offer them the supports and services they need so that they can secure economic independence and build a better future for their families.

The genesis of the current reforms to the one-parent family payment was contained in the 2006 report "Proposals for Supporting Lone Parents". This report recommended that a time limit for receipt of the payment should be put in place. The report also advocated that lone parents should be engaged with in a systematic manner in terms of facilitating their movement to education, training and employment supports. This is the critical issue. If one leaves doing that until late in people's lives, it is difficult for them to achieve their goals.

The reforms reduce the age of the youngest child for receipt of one-parent family payment on a phased basis over a long phasing. The final phase will see the age of the youngest child at which payment ceases being reduced to seven years for all recipients from 2 July 2015 onwards. It is expected that approximately 30,000 lone parents will transition from the one-parent family payment on that date. This is in addition to 16,000 lone parents who have already made the transition since the reforms commenced in 2013.

The aim of these reforms is to reduce long-term welfare dependency by providing lone parents with enhanced access to the Department's range of education, training and employment supports, and to further assist in the provision of appropriate supports to lone parents. The Department is sponsoring research by Dr. Michelle Millar whose aim is to identify best practice in how to assist lone parents in improving their access to education and employment to ensure they have greater levels of opportunity for themselves and their families.

To ease the transition of lone parents from the one-parent family payment, I have introduced a wide range of measures. These measures, depending on the individual circumstances of the lone parent, aim to extend his or her eligibility to the one-parent family payment, remove conditionality, improve the financial incentive to take up employment or offer increased support for lone parents to engage in education and training. Lone parents who are recently bereaved are exempted from the reform. These reforms do not affect lone parents who are carers, but such lone parents, if they have any time, are free to become involved in the education and training and any other scheme that may be of interest to them.

In order to help lone parents with young children who are affected by this reform, I introduced the jobseeker's allowance transitional arrangement. Under this arrangement, lone parents whose youngest child is between seven and 13 years of age are exempt from the requirements of being available for and genuinely seeking full-time employment. This means that no lone parent with a youngest child under 14 years of age will be required to take up employment in order to receive income support from the Department. That is their choice in accordance with how they wish to arrange their affairs. There is no compulsion whatsoever involved. What is on offer is a series of opportunities that lone parents, as they see fit, may wish to take up.

All of the lone parent customers will have access to the new Intreo service. They will have for the first time the opportunity to access a case officer on a one-to-one basis in order to agree their own personal development plan. This will enhance their access, whether to education, training or employment. We will be giving those lone parents all the support we can to achieve their ambitions and goals. Individuals on the jobseeker's allowance transitional arrangement can move into employment, including, if they wish, part-time employment, but this is not a prerequisite for payment. The transitional arrangement thereby allows such lone parents to balance their caring responsibilities and significantly reduces their requirement for child care.

For lone parents who are already in employment and in receipt of family income supplement, FIS, we have for the first time introduced automatic increases in their family income supplement entitlement - Senators will be aware that many lone parents will receive significant increases. This ensures that their income will increase to partially compensate them when they transition from the one-parent family payment. To further encourage lone parents to take up employment or to increase their hours of employment, departmental staff are actively promoting the family income supplement scheme as the best financial option available to lone parents.Departmental staff are actively promoting the family income supplement scheme as the best financial option available to lone parents. Lone parents who can increase the number of hours they can work to 19 hours per week will be significantly better off than if only in receipt of the one-parent family payment. On foot of the age reforms over the past two years, the evidence shows more lone parents than expected increased their working hours and claimed FIS for the first time. I expect this trend to continue with this year's reforms. To further assist, I have asked the Labour Market Council to specifically examine the issue of how employers nationwide can assist lone parents in increasing their hours of work to enable them to qualify for the FIS payment. In addition to the FIS, lone parents who transition off welfare and into employment are eligible for the new back-to-work family dividend payment which is also contained in the Social Welfare Bill 2015. This payment allows lone parents and jobseekers to retain their child proportion, roughly €30 per week per child, of their social welfare payment when they move into employment. As the dividend has no impact on a family's FIS entitlement, it offers an additional and significant incentive for lone parents who are moving into a greater level of work of €30 per child per week for the first year and half of this for the second year.

The Government is committed to improving the provision of child care, including the supports available for lone parents. We have introduced the after school child care scheme and the community employment child care scheme, both of which offer heavily subsidised child care places and aim to assist lone parents to access either a community employment place or to take up employment. Both these schemes build on the existing 25,000 subsidised child care places which the State provides to low income parents in order to facilitate their movement into employment. This is a significant and vital investment and the Government is keen to build on the existing supports. For this reason, my colleague, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Reilly, has established an interdepartmental group to carry out an economic and cost benefit analysis of policies and future options for increasing the supply, accessibility and affordability of quality child care. My Department is involved in, and represented on, this group. My officials are feeding the group's deliberations on the child care requirements of lone parents and jobseekers to enable them take up employment opportunities.

I am pleased to say that in accordance with the aim of the reforms, any recipient of the one-parent family payment who is already undertaking an education course and is in receipt of a SUSI maintenance grant will be allowed to retain the one-parent family payment until completion of the course of education. In addition, there are no restrictions on a recipient of jobseeker's allowance transitional arrangement to undertake a full-time education course and such person will also be able to receive a SUSI maintenance during that time. The reforms of the one-parent family payment are essential to the creation of a new, more active engagement process for lone parents. I know from meeting constantly with people who have moved into education and training that the transition towards paid employment, combined with family income supplement or other income supports, offers serious job and career prospects to lone parents as their children grow up. The feedback to the Department in relation to the changes has been extremely positive, particularly from the parents who have taken up the opportunities, starting in most cases with education and training over a prolonged period.

I thank Senators for raising this issue, particularly those who spoke on the motion. We all share a common vision and ambition in that we want to see people supported by a strong and good social welfare system. Ireland's social welfare system is among the best in Europe. For example, our rates are hugely in excess of the rates in the North of Ireland and in almost every other country of the European Union. Notwithstanding the economic difficulties of this country, we have been able to maintain that. However, as I said, we must continue to work to assist and make available the talents, intelligence and desire of lone parents to be involved in work, to start their own businesses and have good careers that will assist themselves and their children to financial independence.

I know there are some people for whom this may not be an immediate objective. For example, approximately 20,000 lone parents are not involved in education or employment. By choice, they are involved in the full time care of their children. I want to stress that there is no change of any kind to their payment. As stated by Senator Zappone, the key and road to positive developments is education and training, which is precisely the Department's desire for lone parents. The reason we have contacted lone parents is to give them the opportunity to engage with departmental officials in regard to the building of a career plan, which if it is not possible for them to undertake this year can be undertaken in three or four years' time. There is too much talent there and it must not be left in a kind of poverty and welfare trap, which is what this debate is about. I again thank those who contributed.