Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I find the lone parent cut very difficult because I am always struck with admiration when lone parents come to see me. It is always the mother who comes to see me. They come to talk about the challenges to stay in education and continue to rear their child and generally it is to do a master's degree. I am struck by the mothers who rear their children and manage alone. The key word for me in all of this is "alone". When I had younger children I was grateful for the fact that I had a partner, a husband, to help me rear the children because, truly, it is tough work. I can only imagine what it is like rushing home from a few hours of work, worried about traffic, collecting a child and having to manage alone for the evening. Around 5 p.m. is a really tough time with young children so it is nice to have an extra pair of hands. Why are we singling out lone parents? Some 98% of them are mothers and there are children involved. They are our future. These are the people in whom we should be investing. Senator David Norris put some stories on the record. The following is what a mother said to me:

I will be watching the Seanad vote on lone parent cuts tomorrow. Due to my job and salary being halved because of reforms which have disadvantaged me and my daughter I can hardly believe that the Labour Party who were voted in by people like me, because of their equality policies, do not get the huge disadvantages being created in a failure to recognise at any level that lone parents have issues which sometimes mitigate against employment. If you believe that my losing my work and salary and being directly casualised is of advantage to my daughter, then the feminism that the Labour Party purported to support is a lie and not worth my time.

That is what I question. The Labour Party is not pro-woman, pro-child or pro-family. I will not even speak about the fact that I have not got an answer from the Leader or the Minister about the 17 pregnant and homeless women in Dublin, whom I mentioned here last week. I have tried to get coverage for them. Who cares? It does seem as if any anybody really cares. Children, women and family must matter. They are the bedrock on which we build the society in which we are going to create some stability.

According to the Department of Social Protection, 11,000 parents, not 4,000, immediately lost income after the changes to the one-parent family payment were introduced. Many will not be able to increase their hours to qualify for family supports and many will lose their jobs. Those taking up work will be poorer than they would have been under the 2012 rules. Each Government report identified that child care is a structural barrier that needs to be addressed in addition to reforming the one parent family payment. I welcome reform if it is met with supportive measures. This is reiterated by Task, the ESRI, the OECD, One Family and Barnardos. Blaming the one parent families is something I have a great difficult with.As Senator David Norris said the average time on one parent family payment is 5.6 years, with just over 7% on it for more than 15 years, which I agree is a long time but many of those are carers or in education. That lone parents are languishing in welfare dependency in great numbers appears to be a myth. There are contradictions here. I want to say something which I am sure it will be very controversial.