John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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893. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection to outline her views on the Indecon report showing the impact that changes to the one-parent family payment have had on lone parents with regard to levels of deprivation. [30840/18]

John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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896. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection to outline the steps being taken to tackle poverty in lone-parent families. [30844/18]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 893 and 896 together.

Research repeatedly shows that the best way to tackle poverty among lone parents is through employment and the Indecon report on lone parents, published in 2017, echoed this view. The report found that the changes made to the one-parent family payment scheme in 2012 increased employment and reduced welfare dependency. It also found that the changes increased the probability of employment and higher employment income for lone parents. The report also concluded that assisting lone parents to enhance skills needs to be seen as a key objective, as low paid employment will not, on its own, ensure a reduction in the risk of poverty.

The review additionally highlighted a number of areas of concern: many of those who lost OFP remain unemployed, or are in low paid or part-time employment. The balance of evidence indicates that there is an increased probability of being at risk of poverty as a result of the changes. Further supports, aimed at assisting lone parents to obtain full-time employment or increased hours of work, need to be put in place.

Continued economic recovery, together with Budget measures over recent years introduced as the economy began to work its way out of recession, are likely to have impacted positively on poverty rates since 2016 (the most recent available data) and since the period examined in the Indecon report. This improvement is expected to continue over the coming years. My Department’s social impact assessments of Budgets 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 are an indicator of this improvement. These show a cumulative increase of €36.75 in the average weekly household income of employed lone parents (and €33.60 for unemployed lone parents). This compares favourably with a weekly increase of €34.45 for the average household (given the impact of two-adult families on the average household figure).

Budget 2018 measures that took effect from 29th March this year (specifically the increases to the income disregard, the primary rate and the increase for a qualified child) will assist a lone parent in receipt of the one-parent family payment or jobseeker’s transitional payment, working 15 hours a week on the National Minimum Wage, to be better off by almost €1,000 per year.

We know that social transfers are very effective in reducing poverty and that Eurostat data shows that Ireland performs well in this regard. But we also know that reducing poverty for lone parents is not just about income support. The latest CSO Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) for 2016 shows that being at work reduces the consistent poverty rate for lone parents by nearly two-thirds, highlighting that the best way to tackle poverty among lone parents is to assist them into employment.

Our focus therefore, through the activation service provided by my Department, is on supporting lone parents to make the transition into employment and, at a cross-governmental level on assisting these families through the provision of quality services in areas including education, training and employment supports, and childcare.