Almost one in three lone-parent families in the Republic is living below the income poverty line - and nearly 50 per cent of lone parents have no post-primary education.
These are among the key findings of a review of the OneParent Family Payment (OFP) announced yesterday by the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs, Mr Ahern.
"I am concerned at the continuing high poverty rates for lone parents and their children and at the fact that long-term welfare dependency has become a reality for many of those on OFP," the Minister said.
Under the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness, the Government was committed to "looking at poverty reduction targets" for children and women. The OFP, which is £77.50 and £15.20 per child, was introduced in 1997. It has two main objectives:
to relieve hardship where a lone parent has not secured adequate - or any - maintenance from her/his spouse or the other parent of the child.
to support and encourage lone parents to consider employment as an alternative to long-term welfare dependency, while at the same time supporting them to remain in the home if that is preferred.
Lone parents can earn up to £115.38 a week without this affecting their payment. Half of any earnings between that figure and £230.76, however, must be means-tested. A claimant will qualify if she/he has the main care and charge of at least one child who is living with her/him and is not cohabiting - that is, living with someone as wife or husband.
The number of lone parents is continuing to grow, with the proportion of births outside marriage having almost doubled in the last 10 years. Unmarried lone parents now account for nearly 75 per cent of the 70,000 or so receiving OFP. In 1999, expenditure on the scheme was £343 million and it is estimated to rise to about £385 million in the current year - or 7 per cent of the Department's budget.
In general, the review concluded that while current OFP arrangements are justified, other responses, particularly in the training and educational areas, would need to be tailored to meet the needs of lone parents. "A more proactive approach to this group, especially in the information, training and employment areas, needs to be taken."
It is planned to decentralise administration of the scheme to the Department's local offices - to help bring lone parents into closer contact with the various support services.
And, significantly, the review concludes that the OFP "should not facilitate or encourage long-term social welfare dependency for a group of people of working age and ability". It was not proposed to make receipt of OFP conditional on seeking employment "at this stage".
However, it is clear that some degree of "conditionality on claiming" may be introduced, given the increased cost of the scheme - up 15 per cent a year on average since 1990 - changing attitudes towards parents working outside the home and "the fact that the current arrangements are out of step with the international experience".
This, in turn, would put more focus on "maintenance" and the way society "views parents who do not take financial responsibility for their children at the State's expense".
The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), in an appendix to the review, examined the experience of OFP claimants - in eight focus groups - in relation to the scheme. A key theme to emerge was that "lone parents put their children first and this means that many of their own needs remain unmet".