Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Yes. I will first speak about amendment No. 15, which is on jobseekers transitional payment. One of my key concerns is that those who have a child over 14 years of age cannot access the jobseekers transitional payment and, therefore, are not part of the jobseekers transitional payment supports.I will speak first to amendment No. 15 and then to amendment No. 14, as it will work better.

I spoke previously about the jobseeker's transitional payments supports. There are still concerns. I know that there has been a partial income disregard restored in terms of the financial loss that people experienced in moving to the jobseeker's transitional payment. I want to focus on the supports attached to jobseeker's transitional payments. There is a concern, which comes back to the issue of casework, about whether a full and rich gamut of employment, training and educational opportunities are being offered to those who are on the jobseeker's transitional payment.

As a result of the waiver on the requirement for full-time availability, we still do not have an adequate or wide enough range of part-time courses, part-time training supports or part-time education. People may want to go back to education but they would only be able to go part time. How can we ensure that when people are on this new payment they will also have an appropriately tailored set of supports, for example, those which recognise the constrained time availability but also access to the full range of the wider supports that are there? The Minister addressed this very eloquently on Second Stage that there is no reason that a lone parent who is on the jobseeker's transitional payment may not want to start a five-year course to become a physicist and why that should not be one of the options on the table, rather than being bound into a constrained set of options. It is around improving that work.

The problem of lone parents with a child more than 14 years of age, is that they do not have access to any of the tailored supports, the idea of case workers who would be working with them, recognising in particular their care balances and in some cases a person is available full-time but in other cases, parents of a 14 or 15 year old who are facing challenges may not feel they are able to work full-time because they are parenting alone. They do not have a safety net or back-up person who is sharing holiday time and whatever else families do to try to manage.

We all know that every family in Ireland, not just lone parent families, are juggling and figuring out how to make it work. The challenges faced by a lone parent with teenagers are very high. There are two concerns. First, the qualified child payment. I recognise there was a small increase in that payment. I am sure the Minister would acknowledge that the small increase in the qualified child payment was inadequate. There is a specific need for an increase in qualified child payments for those with children over the age of 14 years. We know that in great detail from the Vincentian Partnership indepth research on minimum essential standards of living. We know there are huge costs. The other issue is the additional child care supports and tailored options that people might need. I hope, I will revisit it in the year ahead, that we should be able to look to a point where anybody with a child under 18 years who is parenting alone is able to access jobseeker's transitional support.

People who are parenting alone feel they become invisible parents once their child hits 14 years of age. The lone parent feels he or she is viewed as just a person claiming the jobseeker's allowance, and is no longer recognised as somebody who is parenting alone and facing those particular challenges.