Lynn Ruane (Independent)

Some of my amendments were ruled out of order, which I kind of expected, but this amendment is similar in nature to Sinn Féin's amendment, one that I will be supporting. It relates to a report on the provision of supports to bereaved children. For as long as I have been elected, and prior to that, I have spoken about how single parents are viewed in the country historically. We had a referendum last year in which we debated mothers and Article 14.1, yet we are still talking about the protection of children being based on the relationship of their parents, whether it be divorced, cohabiting or married. What we have seen from the O'Meara case is the explicit reference that children should not be penalised because their parents are not married. Children should not be penalised, regardless of the relationship of their parents in its totality. There are parents who have never maintained a relationship with the other parent of their child, but that does not mean they do not co-parent. They might never have been in a committed relationship. Children from a very brief relationship, for example, a one-night stand or a year-long relationship, do not currently feature in the debate at all. If anything, they are at the most risk of poverty, especially if we look at Ireland's child maintenance system. If a child's father is paying the mother €50 a week in maintenance, it makes a huge difference to someone on social welfare or in a low-skilled manual job. Unfortunately, I have many friends whose children's fathers died in various ways, including suicide. Even though the relationship may not have existed for long enough for it to even be considered as a cohabiting one, the maintenance goes towards ensuring a child does not experience any consistent poverty.You remove the emotional labour of the other parent, regardless of relationship, and now the financial piece is removed as well. Currently, no discussion is happening whether it is on pensions or bereaved partners, wives or husbands on the surviving parent. Why are we not looking at the surviving parent? Why are we not creating some sort of mechanism that the financial support for a child happens because he or she is a bereaved child? He or she is a child who has been left more vulnerable due to the absence of one parent, both emotionally and financially, with regard to what this Bill looks for.

My amendment seeks to o broaden the discussion even more beyond divorce and cohabiting, and placing it firmly back in the conversation of children’s rights and what children need. If a report was to be done on it, we would look at whether it would be means tested, for example. There could be multiple children in two different families with the same father or the same mother, but that does not mean that those children’s needs are any less. We are now creating a way we can include more families, but we are leaving potentially the most vulnerable families behind, which are often those single-parent households where cohabitation never existed and marriage never existed at all.

I hope the Minister considers this. It is not a new lens to look as we have the O’Meara case, the Constitution and Children First legislation. We very much have conversations around Children First, but single mothers and children in single-parent households have not featured much with regard to how we financially protect those families and children.

I knew the other amendments would be ruled out because they would create a cost on the State to include more cohorts. However, we will leave many children behind. There could be a payment until the age of 18, or it could be explored within a report, in the context of this Bill. Unlike a widower’s pension that would exist across a lifetime, it could be something that exists across the financial needs of the child until they are a particular age, rather than it being a payment attached to an individual forever. We need to look at the whole family and make sure we are not compounding situations of poverty for very at-risk families.

I ask the Minister to consider this amendment with some of those frames in mind when we move forward about how we make this legislation be completely linked to and led by children’s needs. The fact is, we are still having a conversation around children’s needs, payments and social welfare schemes based on the relationship of two parents to each other rather than what the individual child needs throughout their lives to be able to flourish and succeed in a hard situation where they have lost one parent. It is important, at least, to not put another burden on them when they are not getting any support from the State just because their parents, through no fault of their own, had no long-term relationship or connection to each other legally in terms of marriage.