John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. Unlike most Senators here today, I will not be talking about statistics or Scandinavian models, or whatever. I want to focus on one thing, which relates to what Senator Mooney said. I worked with lone parents as a community welfare officer for many a year and it is as simple as this. There is a lone parent, who has been getting the lone parent's allowance until last week. She might be working ten or 12 hours and might have that extra income. She could have €350 take-home pay per week, but she would be budgeting for that amount of money. Most likely because she had extra money on top of the lone parent's allowance, she could have a loan taken out, maybe for education purposes, or maybe a car loan. She could be taking out a loan to pay for a washing machine. Now that money is gone from her. This is the problem. Her budget is gone. That is the perspective we need to start looking at this from.