Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton has said she will abandon her controversial proposal restricting the one-parent family payment if her Cabinet colleagues fail to include adequate childcare provisions in next December’s budget.
She said she would only proceed with the measures to reduce the upper age limit for the payment to the youngest child to seven years in the event that she got “a credible and bankable commitment from the Government on the delivery of such a system of childcare by the time of this year’s budget”.
She added: “If this is not forthcoming, the measure will not proceed.”
Introducing the Social Welfare Bill in the Dáil last night, Ms Burton said it contained further changes to the payment for new recipients.
From May, it would be made until the youngest child reached 12 years; from January next year until the youngest child was 10 years and from 2014, seven years.
Many of those opposed to the measure had said seven was too young to leave a child without adequate childcare and for a parent to make the first steps back to the workplace or education or training.
She entirely agreed, she said, that when a child was seven it was too young for anyone to seriously contemplate any of these things without there being a system of safe, affordable and accessible childcare in place similar to what was found in the Scandinavian countries whose systems of social protection Ireland aspired to. Ms Burton said she would be engaging with Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald and Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn to establish a co-ordinated approach to ensure that the required level of services were in place.
