Cut in lone-parent payment smacks of the jackboot
No matter how the Government spins it, this proposal will hit the weakest in society, writes Jerome Reilly
At first impression, the Government's plan to abolish One-Parent Family Payments once the youngest child reaches 13 years has the heavy stamp of the jackboot about it.
Sometimes first impressions are right on the money.
Though gift-wrapped in weasel words from Social Protection Minister Eamon O Cuiv that the plan is in some way an "anti-poverty measure", the proposal will hit the weakest in Irish society; soft targets who don't have the political clout or the wherewithal to fight back.
It will create a generation of latch-key children. It will force many of the nearly 100,000 recipients, overwhelmingly but not exclusively female, into exploitative, low-paid jobs and it will undermine the fabric of Irish society. It will mean opportunities for the children of single parents to go into third-level education could be curtailed.
It will also save money, though, of course, both O Cuiv and the Taoiseach Brian Cowen have bent over backwards to insist that the plan is not a cost-cutting measure.
That is cant and hypocrisy in full measure and it flies in the face of the facts.
And underlying the whole sorry debacle is the whiff of accusation; that single parents have it too soft and that they are a feckless, work-shy sub-species living high on the hog at the taxpayers' expense.
Worse still is the innuendo, sly and silent, that single women are having children simply to maximise their pickings from social welfare.
First the facts. The One-Parent Family Payment is made to a single parent who is not working, Now it is paid until the the child reaches 18, or 22 if the child is in full-time education. If the parent has more than one child it is paid until the youngest child reaches 18 or 22 if still in education.
To those single parents who receive the payment, it is worth €196 a week. For each additional child there is a further €29.80.
It's worth pointing out that 57 per cent of single parents have only one child and a further 28 per cent have only two children, so 85 per cent have two children or fewer.
Less than 5 per cent have four or more children which demolishes the slander that tens of thousands of women are turning themselves into "baby factories" to pillage the state coffers.
The new plan, slipped under the door by the Department of Social Protection late on a Friday evening in the smallish print of the Social Welfare Bill, will lower the age limit for qualifying children from next April.
The first point of the plan, which was first flagged by former minister in charge Mary Hanafin late last year, is that, from April next, the payment to "new customers" will stop at 18 -- even if the child is still in full-time education.
Over the following six years, the upper age limit for a qualifying child will drop from 18 to 13 years -- 17 years in 2013, 16 years in 2014 and so on. The savings will be just over €1m in the first year but will rise rapidly to €30m by 2016. O Cuiv's claim that it is not about saving money doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
When the payment stops, parents will be able to seek Jobseekers' Allowance which, at its maximum, is at the same level as the One-Parent Family Payment of €196 but those lone parents with more than one child will lose out. Jobseekers' Allowance is means- tested and given to those who are available for, and genuinely seeking, work.
When the plan was roundly attacked, O Cuiv conceded that after-school services for the children of the less well-off were sporadic but he promised that services would be in place by the time the measure starts to bite. "It's patchy around the country, I grant you. In the lead-in time, we will work together . . . to resolve the issues," he said.
That unconvincing bluster came as the economic think tank -- the ESRI -- painted a grim picture of life as a single parent in Ireland.
Ireland's lone-parent households are up to 10 times more likely to be living in consistent poverty than other households in Ireland.
Chris Whelan, of the UCD Sociology Department, and Bertran Maitre, of the Economic and Social Research Institute, looked at seven European countries, concluding that Ireland was the worst for single-parent households.
The researchers say Ireland represents the worst-case scenario in relation to outcomes for people in lone-parent households, with the highest levels of consistent poverty.
The comparison with Finland is telling. In that country, the odds of a lone parent living below the poverty line are only marginally higher than for the Finnish population as a whole.
Susan McKay, of the National Women's Council, pointed out that lone parents who are able to find full-time employment will face the Hobson's choice of paying for expensive childcare for their teenage child after they come home from school, or take the risks associated with letting their children come home from school to wait without adult supervision until their parent finishes work.
O Cuiv said the changes would encourage people back to work, but Candy Murphy, policy and research manager of the organisation known as One Family, countered by saying they saw little evidence that the proposed changes would help move parents off social welfare and into well-paid work that would lift families out of poverty.
The leader of the country's biggest union and Ictu general president, Jack O'Connor, said nothing could highlight the "sheer intellectual bankruptcy of this administration more then the heartless proposals continued in the new Social Welfare Bill".
He added: "They are reprehensible beyond belief, exhibiting the worst characteristics of the 19th Century Poor Law regime, penalising the most vulnerable in our society."
On this issue at least, Mr O'Connor has hit the nail on the head.
The proposal is both ill-conceived and deeply unfair.
Originally published in
