On the Adjournment: A recess opportunity for TDs to air their views. This week Willie Penrose argues that one-parent families are over-represented among households living in consistent poverty.
There were 150,634 lone-parent households listed in the 2002 census. Lone mothers account for 85 per cent of the total; 79,915 lone-parent families were in receipt of State support. These are the unvarnished public statistics.
But they do not show how vulnerable lone-parent families are; nor how their predicament in a prospering country is getting worse rather than better. Relatively few people choose to become lone parents. Lone parenthood can arise for any of us- through death, divorce, desertion, separation, imprisonment of a partner or an unplanned pregnancy. It is usually a traumatic event for the lone parent and affected children.
Lone-parent families are at high risk of persistent poverty. This is determined largely by the prospects of employment and feasibility of employment. Employment for lone mothers is low in Ireland (as in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands). Yet employment is the key to raising such mothers out of the poverty to which their circumstances often condemn them.
It can be difficult for a lone parent to take up work even if it is on offer. Children have to be cared for with no second parent to share responsibility. Work must be found which facilitates such requirements as when children need to be taken to and collected from school. Many lone mothers, the largest group by far, have low educational qualifications and can only find relatively low-paid, insecure employment. For many, work will be impossible without paid childcare. For low-wage earners, however, the cost of childcare can take up the whole of any income.
The poverty of lone-parent families is largely determined by the level of and regulations relating to lone parent State payments; by access to childcare support and its costs; and by the type of employment available.
The first comprehensive approach to State support was introduced in 1997 by Proinsías De Rossa as minister for social welfare. This was the one-parent family payment which applied to all such families regardless of circumstance. This was innovative. The regulations allowed lone parents earn up to €146.50 per week without losing any of their allowance. It enabled them to earn up to €293 per week before the payment was lost.
In the past seven years there has been no rise in this payment. Childcare costs doubled between 1997 and 2000 and can be assumed to have risen since. It means lone parents wishing to work are in an impossible position. They lose State payments well before they earn enough to cover extremely high childcare costs and before they have to address their living expenses.
Monitoring reports of the National Anti-Poverty Strategy show that, of all households, one-parent families have the highest risk of being deprived of basic necessities through lack of income.
One-parent families are overrepresented among households living in consistent poverty, and figures show the trends are moving in the wrong direction for lone-parent families. In 1994 such households accounted for one in every 20 in consistent poverty. Seven years later this has risen to one in five.
Some lone parents have little or nothing left to pay for what others consider essentials, such as back-to-school needs, children's birthdays or Christmas costs.
It is not as if we in the Oireachtas are not aware of the consequences of inadequate social support. The CORI Justice Commission has made it clear that social welfare payments in Ireland, despite living increases, have failed to keep recipients out of poverty.
Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands are the only EU member-states to offer totally free pre-school childcare to lone mothers. Most others subsidise childcare either for everyone or for specific groups such as lone parents. In Ireland, despite our acknowledged high childcare costs, there is minimal subsidisation and a low level of public provision.
The Minister for Justice and Law Reform keeps seeking publicity for the Equal Opportunities Childcare Programme 2000-06 which receives significant EU funding and is intended to provide many more childcare places. But this project has been found to be "not explicitly targeted at groups identified as disadvantaged in childcare terms".
The more significant action of the Government on childcare for the disadvantaged has been the cut in the creche supplement; one of the 16 infamous social welfare cuts introduced by the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Ms Coughlan, before the last Budget.
In 2001 a report by the National Economic and Social Forum on lone parents and employment made many recommendations. A further OPEN report this year finds there has been little improvement. With this right-wing Government one shouldn't be surprised. The report found many employment supports, training initiatives and employment schemes are aimed at the unemployed in general and take no account of the special needs of one-parent families.
Employment and training schemes are complex, it said, and a major exercise is required in calculating whether an individual lone parent would gain or lose financially by availing of them.
A shocking indictment of the system is medical-card provisions which are poorly publicised. For example, anyone who has been unemployed for 12 months or who takes part in employment schemes will retain the card for the first three years of employment regardless of earnings.
Finally, there is the Community Employment Scheme where 30 per cent of participants in 2000 were lone parents (26 per cent in 2004). This Government has reduced this programme below the level agreed in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness. Only 20,000 CES places are now available.
In the 2003 Guide to Social Welfare Services the mission statement was extended to include the major objectives of "promoting social inclusion and supporting families". Can the Minister claim that the treatment of one-parent families on her watch has achieved or come close to achieving this objective? I think not.
Willie Penrose is chairman of the parliamentary Labour Party, a TD for Westmeath and the party's spokesman on social and family affairs