Caít Keane (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is a most important subject because, when speaking about lone parents, we are speaking about children as well. I welcome some lone parents and some children to the Gallery. Bringing in children shows that child care is important. It is amazing that reforms meant to do such good have raised such public debate and fear among lone parents. When putting in place reform, it is important to spell out why it is being done. According to the media, it is all about cutting money from lone parents. The benefits of what this is supposed to do, what it hopefully will do, are not being enunciated. I hope the debate today will ensure the Minister of State gets what needs to be done, clarified and changed. The aims of the reform were to provide the necessary support to help lone parents gain the necessary training, education and employment and to develop their skills. Any lone parent has no objection to that objective because that is what people want for themselves. If their children are gone back to school and are not babies, most lone parents I know would love to go back to training and education and to be helped to do so. That is the objective of this. Perhaps the wrong message is going out.

The reform should also reduce long-term social welfare dependency. No parent wants to be that way but the current system helps them to be that way and to be unemployed and on long-term payments for so long. The figures show that this is not working. The current system is not working for parents and they are the most important element, as are the children. Significant investment has been put in, including €1 billion per year from 2008 but has failed to prevent lone parents from being in consistent poverty. We saw the poverty rating two weeks ago, with lone parents working out much worse than anyone else. This particularly applies to women and 87% of lone parents are women. That is a debate that another Senator raised. In 2004, lone parents were four and a half times more at risk of consistent poverty compared to the population as a whole. They must be helped out of poverty. We must help everyone out of poverty but lone parents in particular because they are vulnerable and the children are vulnerable.

Looking at examples from across the globe, we see New Zealand, the Netherlands and United Kingdom, where the equivalent of lone parent support ceases when the youngest child is aged five. There is an important caveat, which is child care. I hope the Minister of State, the Tánaiste, Deputy Joan Burton, and the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy James Reilly, are listening. I have spoken about child care ad infinitum. Some 20 years ago, when I was on South Dublin County Council, I set up the first crèche in a local authority in Ireland. If we do not have child care, we will not facilitate people going back to work. The crèche was subsidised to get people, particularly women, into work and it was the first in Ireland. There are now a few of them. If there is not someone to mind their children, people cannot go back to work. We cannot put the cart before the horse and must provide for child care. Every Department must row in behind the idea and get child care in order. There are subsidies in place and I am sure the Minister of State will say that, with this reform, comes extended child care benefits for people on the family income supplement and the back to education allowance. We must acknowledge that the Tánaiste, Deputy Joan Burton, has done this and more subsidised places and funding are available.

The family income supplement is reviewed annually and the Department recently amended the regulations allowing family income supplement to increase automatically to offset the loss from the one parent family payment. Until I researched further, I did not realise that because it was not stated often. Parents thinking about transitioning from one scheme to the other and considering going back to education should have this made more clear to them. Parents are hearing that they will be worse off by a certain amount, regardless of the fact that 20,000 lone parents will experience no change and some will experience an increase. One example, which Senator Bacik referred to, is a person with three children earning €20 an hour. By increasing the number of hours worked from 15 to 19 and moving from the one parent family payment to the back to education allowance, the person will be better off by €185 per week. That is by increasing part-time employment by four hours and the child of seven years is in school so the parent does not need child care. The parent will be home from work at the time the child is home from school. We must examine the cohort of families with children who must be held to go back to work if they want to. No one will be forced and that is an important point. With regard to child care, parents in the home should be facilitated to make a choice.I know the Minister, Deputy Reilly, is working on the question of whether the best place for children under one year of age is in child care or with their parents at home. The whole thing has to work together for the benefit of the everyone. As it stands, it is not working for anybody. It is not working for lone parents at all and they are the most important people. Money is being put into this area. The current state of poverty of lone parents means they need to be helped. That is our objective and I hope we will achieve it. I hope that by working with the Tánaiste and the Minister, Deputy Reilly, we can ensure a better system of child care is in place by the end of this year to help lone parents and everybody else who is facing this dilemma. The back to education scheme is also important. As another Senator said, education is the most important thing for lone parents.