JOINT COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL AND FAMILY AFFAIRS debate -
Tuesday, 4 Jul 2006

One Parent Network: Presentation.

Chairman

On behalf of the joint committee, I welcome the representatives of the One Parent Network, OPEN, Ms Frances Byrne, chief executive, and Ms Camille Loftus, head of policy and research, who are appearing on behalf of lone parents groups throughout Ireland. They are here to make a presentation on the Government's discussion paper. A number of their colleagues, including the chairperson of OPEN, are in the gallery and are also welcome. We appreciate that they have taken time to come before the committee and assist in their colleagues' presentation.

Members will recall that the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Brennan, made a presentation on 30 May 2006 and we will, therefore, probably receive feedback on his proposals. I have already indicated to Ms Byrne and Ms Loftus that we are seeking from them a broad outline of the key issues that they feel are important in this regard. We will then have discussion involving members and the witnesses. I know from previous experience that our witnesses are eloquent and will be well able to deal with the committee's most searching questions.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not comment on, criticise, or make charges against any person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. Members who wish to make a declaration concerning any matter being discussed may do so now or at the beginning of their contributions. Members are also reminded that if there is a possibility of there being a conflict of interest, they should make a declaration of that interest now or at the beginning of their contributions.

I draw witnesses' attention to the fact that members of the committee have absolute privilege but that this same privilege does not apply to witnesses appearing before the it. While it is generally accepted that a witness would have qualified privilege, the committee is not in a position to guarantee any level of privilege to witnesses appearing before it. In the context of the presentation to be given by the group today, I do not think this will create any difficulties.

I call on Ms. Frances Byrne to make a presentation to the committee and we will then have a discussion.

Ms Frances Byrne

I thank the Chairman and members. It is, as always, an honour to be here. We were delighted to receive the invitation, which was very timely given that our submission is making its way to the Minister today. We are pleased to be here to present it to the joint committee.

OPEN is the national network of lone parents groups, of which there are approximately 80 in Ireland. The only county where there is no group at present is Roscommon. However, we are working on that with the Roscommon partnership.

There are a number of proposals from the Minister that we warmly welcome. I refer, for example, to an end to the cohabitation rule. Deputies and Senators will be aware that this rule has resulted in the creation of what the Minister described as "an army of inspectors" who ask very personal questions of lone parents about their private lives. We welcome the ending of that rule but, given that one-parent families are our chief concern, the focus of our submission is the impact of the proposals on lone parents and on those who will remain lone parents and who are rearing children on their own, either as a transitional arrangement or permanently. While we comment in our submission on cohabiting families, our main focus is on lone parents and children.

We have grouped our proposals or responses into five main areas. We do not propose to deal with two of these, which are concerned with monitoring and implementation, today. Members received a copy of our submission, which goes into detail on those issues. The three areas on which we wish to focus are child care, making work pay and labour market supports.

We are prioritising child care in our submission and in today's presentation. Some representatives of the committee attended the Farmleigh consultation and will note that we have placed even more emphasis on child care since then. That is because we conducted more consultations after 27 April, which was the day of the Minister's consultation, and a number of key areas of concern have emerged from the lone parents in our member groups.

One concern relates to what we term mutual obligation. We are concerned that flexibility within current child care provision, whether private or community-based, simply does not exist. By flexibility we mean after-hours provision, that is, child care that is available before and after school hours. We are also concerned about the fact that in some parts of the country, predominately rural areas but also in some urban centres, child care is simply unavailable. In that context, there is limited flexibility for people who are forced to ask their parents or other relatives to mind their children. Whatever way the Government decides to proceed, there must be mutual obligation, whereby a mediator or a job facilitator will work with a lone parent to try to find child care in their area. If child care is not available through private or public provision, someone must take responsibility for feeding that information back up through the system so that the absence of child care, particularly in rural areas, becomes a policy concern at national level and is communicated to, for example, the Office of the Minister for Children.

The problem regarding child care availability highlights the need for a broad subsidisation strategy. While we are specifically concerned with lone parents, we believe that all parents should have the ability, in the absence of public or private provision, to identify their own child care options and for a universal subsidisation to apply. The current proposals are worrying because this area is clearly identified as one of concern and one that requires attention but there is absolute silence about what must happen. That is a cause of grave concern because this is the issue that has risen to the top of the agenda following our consultations with member groups. My colleague, Ms Loftus, will deal with other areas of concern but even if difficulties relating to them are resolved, the child care problem will continue to obtain. She will elaborate further on that later.

Another issue that arose during our later consultations is the fear among lone parents regarding the emerging phenomenon of latchkey children. If the lack of child care provision is not properly addressed, parents of older children, particularly those in first year in secondary school, who cannot find child care will be forced to make very difficult decisions and be faced with no choice but to allow their 12 year old children to go home by themselves. This issue has arisen in urban and rural contexts, but the problem is more acute in rural areas.

I will now ask my colleague, Ms. Loftus, who is the head of policy and research, to address the other two areas, namely, making work pay and labour market supports. Obviously, all of these issues are related.

Ms Camille Loftus

In dealing with the issue of making work pay, there are two angles. One is concerned with income supports, that is, what happens in the social welfare and tax systems. The other relates to the type of labour market supports we have in place and whether these ensure that people can earn a sufficient amount in the market so that work actually pays.

While there is much that we welcome in the Minister's proposals, they will all come to naught if the age-related poverty trap that is created by the proposals is not addressed. The proposals set out to support and encourage lone parents in greater participation in the labour market. As matters stand, however, a lone parent who is parenting alone and working 20 hours per week at the national minimum wage would suffer a drop in income, between the time his or her child is aged five and aged eight, of approximately €90 — €88.93 to be precise — per week. This adds up to approximately €4,600 per annum. Since we identified this issue, we spoke to a number of people but have not found anybody who would be comfortable with regard to losing €4,600 from his or her annual income. It is unreasonable for us to expect somebody who lives below the poverty line to lose that much money for no reason other than the fact that his or her child has reached eight years of age.

The Minister is aware of this issue and understands that it is a problem. He suggested tapering down this loss, so that the €90 would be taken from a person's income gradually, over a number of years but we do not believe that will work. The person will still be €90 per week, or €4,600 per annum, worse off, regardless of whether that happens over a protracted period or immediately. However, there is no loss of income for parents who remain unemployed. It is only the parents who are doing exactly what the Government wants them to do, that is, participating in the labour market, who will suffer the loss. That is our primary issue with regard to making work pay. If we set up a system that will lead to parents being worse off, we are clearly not going to effectively tackle the issue of poverty among lone parents and their children.

The remaining issues regarding making work pay relate to the current system. Members may be familiar with research, Out of the Traps, that OPEN and EAPN published last year, which documented the poverty and unemployment traps that exist within the current system. It is detailed and technical and I do not intend to discuss it now.

We commenced negotiations with officials in the Department of Social and Family Affairs to address some of these issues. They understand that the issues we identified involve problems and we are hopeful some progress will be made in respect of dealing with them.

From the perspective of lone parents, two of the most important issues are those of rent supplement — in respect of which a long-term solution in the form of the rental accommodation scheme has been identified but the implementation of which is very slow — and child related income supports. If the Government is serious about moving forward with this proposal and about providing an effective solution to the disproportionate levels of poverty that lone parents experience, there will be a significant change in the next budget. If such a change is not forthcoming, it will be a signal of the level of commitment in the system to really tackling this problem. We set out a number of proposals in the document and we are happy to provide more details for Deputies if they wish us to do so.

While those issues relate to the social welfare and tax systems, the other critical issue is the quality and nature of labour market supports available to parents seeking to return to work. Our primary requirement in this regard is the availability of high quality training and educational options. Parents of young children, particularly those parenting on their own, who are concerned about spending enough time with their children will seek to organise their working hours around the time their children are in school. This means that they want a part-time labour market commitment. If they can only be offered a job, the remuneration for which is the minimum wage, for the number of hours they work, we need not fool ourselves into believing that such income will make a significant impact on reducing poverty. It will not do so. Such jobs will not provide adequate incomes to impact in that respect.

We must ensure that lone parents have access to high quality training options such as those available in full-time centre based FÁS provision. Such training is valued and considered to have a good track record by employers and qualifications gained from the courses offered are a path towards securing decent jobs. If such level of training was available to lone parents, it would increase their earning potential. It would allow them to reduce the number of hours they work and yet increase their income. Such training would make an impact on reducing poverty levels and increasing labour market participation. Even if lone parents only participate in the labour market in part-time employment, it would be much easier for them, as their children get older, to increase their hours to full-time employment. Anyone who knows about unemployment would say that a period of absence from the labour market is a killer in terms of trying to secure decent quality employment.

The dilemma people face is that those training options are available only on a full-time basis, with courses at FÁS centres commencing at 8.30 a.m. and running until 4.30 p.m., five days a week. If one reflects on the logistics involved, those hours are not suitable for many lone parents because they cannot drop their children outside school at 8 a.m. and leave them to fend for themselves. That is not a practical option for parents. To compound the problem, parents living in rural areas cannot get to the centres where the courses are held because there is not a proper public transport infrastructure in place.

Such issues present a major challenge to State training and education services. FÁS will advise that it provides courses on the basis I outlined because they meet the standards required by industry. However, my response to that is that industry standards are constantly changing because industry recognises that it needs to respond to the constraints that exist. It is aware that it must provide more flexible work practices. It is also aware that it must change the way it operates to make the system work for the future. Our State training agency should be leading the labour market in that regard and not following on the basis of what employers are doing. If the issue is that there is not the capacity or the resources in FÁS to deliver that quality of training on a flexible basis, which is the critical point, we suggest that it should be outsourced. FÁS provides flexible and community-based options but if members were to inquire from employers in their areas whether those courses are perceived to be of high value, they would quickly discover that they are not. The courses employers recognise are only available on a full-time basis but they must be made available to lone parents on a flexible basis.

The last point I wish to make relates to a comment Ms Byrne made regarding mutual obligation and extends to mediation. In the context of the current proposals, it is not clear whether lone parents might engage at a certain stage with job facilitators in the Department of Social and Family Affairs or with employment service officers in FÁS. It is critical that a real partnership approach should be taken to the issue of mutual obligation to ensure that the mediator works with rather than against the client or does not simply tell the client what to do. Both parties need to meet in an honest and open context and highlight what is needed for the client to make progress towards securing a good quality job. They should work in partnership to achieve those outcomes and the mediator could act almost as an advocate for the client with other service providers.

We should not fool ourselves that labour market disadvantage at this stage is not necessarily a matter of simply getting on the right skills training course, it sometimes involves other social supports. What is required presents an enormous challenge to the system and none of us underestimates that. We consider the issue of mediation as critical to this process. There may be an argument that the Department of Social and Family Affairs should increase its resources in terms of job facilitators and allow that kind of relationship to develop. We wish to flag the fact that if these elements are not provided, with the best will in the world, this initiative will not have the capacity to tackle the poverty experienced by lone parents. We will all jump through many hoops but we will end up with the same result.

Chairman

Ms Byrne and Ms Loftus have offered some interesting thoughts and observations and I appeal to members to show the same degree of focus as that shown by the representatives.

Mr. Stanton

I welcome Ms Byrne and Ms Loftus and thank them for their presentation. I apologise in advance that I may be obliged to leave the meeting before it concludes because a question in my name may be reached in the Dáil.

The representatives' document states that the organisation consulted widely across the country through its network in eight regions. Will they indicate the number of lone parents affiliated to OPEN and the number who attended these consultations? I congratulate the representatives on organising those meetings. The way forward is to consult people on the proposals put forward because they are the people who will be affected by them.

The issue of child care provision was mentioned. All the Deputies present represent rural constituencies. I was particularly interested to hear the representatives refer to the problem of child care provision in rural areas. This discussion document outlines proposals for supporting lone parents and highlights the issues that arise when children are of school-going age and when supports are removed. It states that lone parents who work for a living could be worse off as a result of the proposals as they currently stand, which means that, if anything, they would be a disincentive to work.

The representatives imply that child care provision across the country, especially in rural areas, is utterly inadequate, which implies the Government policy on child care that came into force last year following the budget is not working. In that context and as our guests stated, child care provision is crucial. Adequate child care provision is required because we do not want young people to become latchkey children and be left at home alone. How can we provide child care provision throughout the country, particularly in rural areas where the lack of a proper public transport system is also an issue?

There is also need for child care provision after school hours, an issue that is even more difficult to address. It is difficult for parents to arrange child care provision when children are on school holidays. I am sure constituents have raised this issue with other members. A parent recently visited my clinic and I asked her if she would consider getting a job. She replied that she would do so in September when her children returned to school. She said she could not do so at this time of the year because there was nobody to mind her children, including her ten year old daughter. We would not want a ten year old girl to be left at home on her own while her mother is out working. Such child care provision is a major issue.

The representatives referred to mediation, which is important. With regard to the rent supplement, the rental accommodation scheme does not seem to be working. Perhaps our guests might comment on that.

Flexible working conditions are important. This issue was discussed at an event in Farmleigh that was attended by representatives of FÁS. I do not know if our guests have had any interaction with FÁS since then or if progress has been made on this issue. We raised this issue with the relevant Minister in the Dáil and progress must be made in respect of it if the system is to work. The major issue to be addressed is child care provision and if we do not get that element right, everything else will fall.

A lone parent must accept a job within two or so days of being offered it and the representatives said this period is too short. How much time should lone parents be allocated in this regard?

The earnings of a partner will affect the unemployed individual. It has not been set out in the discussion paper whether a partner's income be assessed for unemployment assistance claims? I suppose it will be assessed for such a purpose but I cannot be sure.

Ms Byrne

I am trying to recall the numbers of lone parents who attended the consultations. To answer the bigger question posed by Deputy Stanton, a major external evaluation was carried out in 2003. The person who carried it out estimated that approximately 10,000 lone parents were receiving services from our member groups. At that time, we had approximately 67 member groups. We must try to obtain funding to carry out another evaluation at some point. I estimate that, at any one time, between 10,000 and 15,000 lone parents receive services from our member groups. All our member groups offer information, advice and support and the vast majority of them offer pre-vocational and vocational education. At national level, we are rolling out a training programme. I will return to Deputy Stanton regarding the numbers of lone parents who are involved.

We are happy to have a very good mixture of urban and rural elements and that all the issues were captured. I wish to praise the staff team because I was not involved in any of this work. Certain issues arose that surprised senior people in the area of policy, such as my colleague, Ms Loftus, and others present. A number of our groups decided to carry out local consultations, a few of which are appended to our presentation. These consultations were very interesting.

In respect of the rural question, Ms Loftus put it very well. It is a combination of a lack of access to public transport as well as location. It is a double whammy. A total of 55,000 out-of-school places were announced in the budget and are also part of the national agreement. According to the Department, approximately 40% of the 18,000 lone parents who are receiving the payment are not working. However, these proposals also apply to 120,000 adult dependants, although this is not our core business. Approximately 160,000 families are not seeking child care. In addition to the thousands of lone parents who are not working outside the home, spouses and partners of unemployed people will also be affected by this. We are concerned about pressure on the system. Politicians know better than anybody the pressures relating to child care in local communities. Our question relates to what will happen if these proposals are introduced and if, on the day one's child reaches eight years of age, one's payment, depending on one's circumstances, will be taken away or reduced.

The Deputy referred to holidays. Some staff members work on a part-time basis and tear their hair out with regard to matters such as curriculum training days, which we all accept must be arranged. In light of this, it is a terrible burden, particularly if a person is parenting alone. We are concerned that the phenomenon of latchkey children, which is not really characteristic of Ireland, will emerge. As the Deputy noted, most of us would feel very uncomfortable about this phenomenon. These are the kind of questions we are raising because they have not been answered in the document. That is our chief concern. We are suggesting ways to address these problems.

It appears that the answer lies somewhere in subsidisation. This is not a criticism of the Government. No Government will be able to provide 160,000 additional places by the time this is due to happen. It is unrealistic to expect this to happen. We are suggesting that the answer might lie with a universal subsidy whereby people can have in-home child care — delivered either in their home or someone else's — or, where they are lucky, access. I acknowledge that it is an urban phenomenon but it is much worse in rural areas for reasons of which everyone present is aware.

Ms Loftus

I will examine the issue of FÁS and then proceed to the income-related questions. I flagged this issue quite strongly with FÁS on the day of the consultation. To my knowledge, progress has not been made the institutional response from FÁS has been that these are industry standards. I have no hesitation in saying that, in light of current requirements, this response is inadequate. I ask members to watch for this type of thinking in the response of FÁS. That organisation will correctly inform the committee that it provides flexible options on a local basis via community providers. However, if members go to large employers in their local towns and ask them what they know about FÁS qualifications, how they rate them and whether they see graduates from such programmes as good employee material, they will get a very clear sense of that to which I am referring. The majority of the monitoring data relating to most of our labour market programmes is available on the Internet. If one examines these statistics, one can discern a very clear pattern whereby full-time centre-based training provided by FÁS has a very good record in the labour market. I have been aware of this for many years, based on my work in the area of policy. People who participated in full-time centre-based training provided by FÁS get good jobs which last for a long time and from which they can progress.

Community is not the issue. The nature of local and flexible provision does not deliver an equivalent level of qualification to that obtained from a full-time course. We can provide such courses but we are fooling ourselves if we think that what people get out of these courses will be sufficient to get them a halfway decent job. That is the nub of the issue. FÁS is correct to say that it offers some flexible provision but I would question the quality of that provision. Do people leave such courses with skills that are in demand in the labour market and with qualifications that are recognised by employers? In broad terms, the answer to this question is no. This issue must be tackled. While there may be developments behind the scenes of which we are unaware, there is no indication in the public domain that there is any appetite to change this state of affairs.

When I carried out the consultations, I almost expected that many mothers would tell me that they did not want jobs because their children were young. I was gobsmacked by the fact that this is not the case. When we carried out the consultations and dealt with the issues, approximately 9.8 out of ten lone parents informed us that, during the past six months, they had been killing themselves seeking work. They offered to show us information regarding the various jobs for which they had applied. Some lone parents told us that they had found jobs but could not find child care. They were very au fait with the practical nature of the challenges involved. The discussion paper talks about encouraging lone parents into the workforce but I walked away from these consultations with the impression of a very high level of frustration among lone parents. They are making significant efforts to secure this level of participation in the workforce but perceive that they are being thwarted at every turn.

In respect of income issues raised by the Deputy, most members are probably perfectly familiar with the nature of the poverty trap created by rent supplement and that the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, has been identified as being the long-term solution to this. The Minister recently stated in the Dáil that just over 1,000 out of the 33,000 people eligible for rent supplement have been transferred to the RAS. At this rate of transfer, many lone parents will be drawing their pensions before they are transferred to the RAS. I can understand the institutional position of the Department of Social and Family Affairs, which is that it provides income supports rather than housing. It believes that the latter is the concern of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. I can see how this institutional battle has played itself out in recent years.

The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government is now running the rental accommodation scheme. We suggested that people who meet the eligibility criteria for the scheme should be assessed on the basis of a differential, rent-type formula that would tackle the unemployment trap. If we already know that people have long-term housing needs, are on low incomes and are approved for the RAS, we should use this assessment even though we have not managed to transfer them into the different accommodation. We should remove the unemployment trap.

I am aware that an expenditure review is ongoing in respect of the supplementary welfare allowance scheme. However, this will only address the issue for people who have been out of work for 18 months. Our labour market has an unemployment rate of approximately 4% and there is a considerable amount of inward-focused migration. There is a demand for a greater supply of labour. We are currently informing people that unless they are out of work for 18 months, they cannot be helped. Many people in the policy system understand that the longer one is out of the labour market, the more difficult it is to return. This was understandable when 20% of the labour force was unemployed, as was the fact that one would tackle long-term unemployment and ration scarce resources. However, we do not need to do so any more. Instead, we must crank up our system to feed labour into the market instead of telling people that we will only help them when they have reached the 18-month mark. In our submission, we indicated that action must be taken. We are happy to work with the Department on identifying a solution.

The Deputy referred to the matter of being able to take a job within a day or two, which reflects the current wording in the guidelines. In our submission, we flagged a number of issues in this regard. The guidelines are a resource for deciding officers in interpreting the legislation. Ms Byrne raised some issues. For example, the inability to find child care provision in one's area is not one's fault and one should not be consequently deprived of income support. One should not be deprived of a social welfare income if there are no flexible employments available. If the only job in an area involves working from 7 p.m. until 10 p.m., a lone parent should not be asked to take it up because that person's child would not get many opportunities to see him or her.

We welcome the Department's positive decision that working for 19 hours per week is good enough. However, we are trying to highlight a number of other issues. No one familiar with the challenges of getting a job and accessing child care services can believe that such could be done in a day or two. From dealing with their constituents, members have experience of this matter.

The QA assessment is technical in nature. When we were examining the matter of a poverty trap, we sent figures to the Department to ensure that we had not made any mistakes. The Department reverted to us and stated that the parental allowance means assessment would be used if one's partner is on employment assistance, which is a technical method. That figure was surprising. I trawled through the report to determine where the issue was discussed. I still cannot find it, however, which indicates that aspects of this proposal have not been fully considered. Indeed, such is a given because we would not have a €90 poverty trap if the proposal had been worked through in a comprehensive manner.

There are a number of technical and, as I refer to them, anorak-type issues that arise. People must consider in fine detail how the system operates. One reason would be to avoid staff being left to implement a system that they know bears no real relationship to the lives of the clients with whom they deal.

Chairman

I am involved with a not-for-profit community child care group. As child care is a key issue and as such groups are essential for one parent families in rural settings such as that from which I come, the recent proposals are, as Ms Loftus indicated, the antithesis of what is contained in the lone parent proposals. They are full of ambition and deal with getting people into work, which is fine if ancillary matters are addressed. However, the Equal Opportunities Childcare Programme 2006-10 states that community and not-for-profit groups will only get staff support payments for three years, after which they must become economically viable or sustainable.

We are discussing lone parents but the situation to which I refer also applies to two-parent families in which both parents work. How could one ask lone parents to pay the economic cost of child care and replace the shoestring budgets on which those places were previously provided? The group to which I refer addressed the matter, including providing new buildings and so on, in a significant manner on a not for profit basis. Many people receive help through the Health Service Executive. Eventually, however, all of this will disappear.

Has OPEN given any consideration to this issue? One cannot proceed without various types of child care being provided. What would happen if one were to charge the actual economic cost of child care relating to babies as opposed to that which relates to after-school child care? I am a director of a not-for-profit organisation and I am aware that internal cross-subsidisation takes place. There is no money involved and one must attend meetings that last for hours. Imagine if someone the shutter will be pulled down in three years' time. Groups such as that with which I am involved are provided with grants to erect new buildings and increase the availability of child care services, such as those relating to babies, children in the one to three age group, those in the three to school-going age group and those who required after-school care. In our area, if we charged customers the economic cost, they would not avail of the service. We would fall at the first hurdle in respect of what the proposal for lone parents is trying to achieve.

I will use a clichéd example. Instead of using a single route for trains going to Cork and Belfast, separate routes are used. There is no joined-up thinking or cross-fertilisation of ideas. Pobal manages the child care programme and many good ideas have been put forward. Last night, I met community groups in my county. The people were all community directors or had other nice titles that mean nothing. However, they are trying to provide child care at every level. Those people informed me that if the three-year period is enforced, most of their services will close.

Where does OPEN stand on this matter? Has it given any consideration to making a substantive submission to Pobal and the Minister of State with responsibility in this area, Deputy Brian Lenihan, to the effect that while the proposal is a great aspiration, it will not, even in a wealthy economy, be a runner?

While there is a degree of community provision in large urban areas, a great deal of it relates to rural areas. Private provision is primarily located in built up areas, which is natural in light of the greater numbers, larger schools, greater industrial base, etc. In rural areas, the provision is community-based, that is, not for profit and put together by locals. Staff can only be paid the minimum wage. We are lucky to have our staff, who work hour after hour. For many, it is a vocation. The entire system will unravel. Perhaps I have misread the situation. Do our guests have an opinion to offer on this matter?

Deputy Ring

I agree with the Chairman. The Department's proposals are a matter of concern. As with every promise made in this country, flushing out lone parents who have problems with cohabiting to determine who may be living with them could be a trap.

Ms Loftus made the point that the situation is similar to that of the workforce. It boils my blood when I see this on a daily basis. The same will occur with regard to lone parents because it is currently happening in respect of social housing. Despite being wealthy, the Chairman could not get a house in a certain estate in Mayo because those responsible are so desperate that they have offered housing to every lone parent in the county. However, they are also telling those lone parents that they will not receive their rent supplements if they do not accept the houses. That is a danger because the same will occur in respect of employment. I have already heard of approximately 30 such cases.

I am disappointed with appeals officers. We should call them before the committee to put manners on them. People come to me on a daily basis and state that they were informed by the Department that plenty of work is available if they want it. The Department refused their claims for social welfare benefits and directed them to the HSE to beg for the few euro they need. The same thing will happen with lone parents, who are being lured into a trap. In time, there will be no support for them. I urge OPEN to be very careful. Nothing will be done before the election but it will be dealt with when the election is over. I hope Fine Gael will be in government at that stage because we will deal with it. Otherwise, it will be sidetracked.

Chairman

Allied to that is the proposal to bring the community welfare system under the aegis of the Department of Social and Family Affairs. OPEN represents a huge group of at least 15,000 people. It has done great work, which I acknowledge. It is also a good organisation to contact if one requires information.

We had a heated debate on the topic last week. If the system is emasculated — a word which caused offence to the assistant secretary general of the Department — by taking discretion away from people, where will that leave lone parents? What control system in the Department of Social and Family Affairs will be available at 9 p.m. on Friday or Saturday nights? Whatever people say about CWOs, they are local and they know the backgrounds of the people in the areas they serve, and can respond on that basis.

Ms Byrne and Ms Loftus have put together a minutely detailed submission but it is important not to lose sight of other things that are happening which may impact negatively on their organisation. I say that in a non-partisan way because all the Deputies and Senators present, from whichever parties, are concerned about those changes.

Ms Byrne

I thank the Chairman. We appreciate his warnings, which are based on experience.

I will return to the issue of child care. We can be deeply cynical but on this occasion we are trying to jump on board a train that is already leaving the station and we are trying to highlight the issues. We have serious concerns and have formally written to the Minister today to convey them. We will monitor events very carefully, regardless of which party is in government after the election.

Deputy Ring

Two future Ministers are present.

Ms Byrne

In the meantime, we would hate the real needs of a very vulnerable group to become lost in what otherwise appear to be sound proposals in respect of child care. Lone parents are vulnerable and though our organisation tries to promote a positive image, the statistics relating to their situation are stark.

Members will see, in appendix 2 of our submission, a reference to one of the founding members of our group who runs a state-of-the-art crèche in Coolock in north Dublin. It is the one we bring European visitors to see because it is absolutely fabulous. The crèche has a high scope curriculum, which is also used in the North of Ireland and which focuses on providing high quality child care. It is important to mention that because the one thing that is often forgotten about child care is the fact that it is about children; it is not about the economy. Some 130,000 children rely exclusively on the one-parent family payment. A total of 60% of them are only children of lone parents and a payment of a measly €185.10 per week, plus the monthly child benefit, is made in respect of them. For those children, child care is not about servicing the economy. What is at issue, rather, is the provision of quality early child care and education and quality pre-school education to children who are disadvantaged. Every study that has ever been done, no matter by whom or in what country, has stated unequivocally that children in disadvantaged families benefit greatly from high quality early intervention. That is the message that needs to be heard.

I could say more but appendix 2 outlines the situation adequately. It costs Doras Buí €216 per week to provide a full-time place for a waddler, as they are called, or a toddler or very small baby. The maximum subsidy it receives, made up of the staffing grant to which the Chairman referred, the provision of some community employment and jobs initiative places — because they choose high scope staff, most employees are given salaries — is 87%, and that is for children from two-parent families. For lone parents living on welfare and because of the sliding scale, just over half of the €216 is covered by subsidies. When it comes to serving the most vulnerable cohort of children, there is already a shortfall of 50%. That is a serious issue and the Chairman is absolutely correct to raise it. Three years from now we will face a crisis.

The fundamental problem is that we are tackling child care as though it were not an education intervention, which is how it should be viewed. Nobody in this room, or, I believe, outside, would ask schools to be economically viable. Why, therefore, do we ask crèches to be economically viable?

Ms Loftus

We have referred a great deal to getting women back into the labour market in recent years. As a society, we have fundamentally failed to grasp the nettle, not only on child care issues but also on care issues in general. As the Chairman said, one can only pay child care workers the national minimum wage. Would anyone in this room consider it acceptable to pay a teacher the national minimum wage? No, they would not.

As regards the poverty trap, I will contextualise my response by saying that my professional background, before I graduated to OPEN, related to work on broader gender equality issues and I also worked for the Irish National Organisation for the Unemployed. I am very familiar with the risks involved. As Ms Byrne said, the approach we try to take to these proposals is to be as progressive, helpful and supportive as possible and to shape the proposals into something useful, though we believe the train is already leaving the station in that regard. More than one unemployed individual has contacted me to say that his or her experience of the employment action plan was of being told to approach the job board and find employment or he or she would lose his or her dole within four weeks. I know that a consultancy was recently hired to review the strategy but members will not find comments of that nature in its report. We are not being honest about the process.

People in this country know what unemployment is like and the havoc it wreaks on families and communities. Ten years ago, nobody would have thought that we would have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world. We can do better than we are doing at present. I understand how such attitudes prevailed when nobody knew how to create jobs and when 20% of the workforce was out of work. I do not include women in that number because in those days it was unpatriotic for a mother to seek work. Now we are short of workers but we do not seem willing to accept that some people did not get a fair share and did not benefit from a proper education system. Those to whom I refer did not have access to decent housing and grew up in environments where anti-social behaviour was a major concern. They have not had a fair opportunity to procure a slice of the pie that was created in recent years.

I agree with the Deputy that the proposals present an enormous threat in that the most vulnerable lone parents would be pressurised and caused to panic. This is one of the prime points in respect of which the prospect of latchkey children becomes a concern. There is a possibility that one might be so concerned about losing basic financial supports that one would take risks one would not otherwise take. We must ask whether we want this to happen in society.

I will not delve too deeply into the debate on community welfare officers but it should be noted that, in recent years, there has been a pattern of removing their capability to respond to distress and poverty. Those who are familiar with the community welfare officer system will know that the officers do a superb job in trying circumstances. They have a great understanding of the pressures, barriers and issues faced by the disadvantaged. They may not have the armoury in their resources to address those problems but they know the nature of those problems. We must ask ourselves what the removal of the officers' capability to respond to distress and poverty says about a society that is so rich. The Deputies' comments are well noted in that regard.

Chairman

I thank Ms Byrne and Ms Loftus for attending. The have made a valuable contribution, addressed issues of importance to the committee and reflected much of the feeling on the ground. It is important when advancing a particular programme that its core is not lost. We all welcomed the Minister's proposals but the welcomes were qualified. Nothing will happen this side of the general election. Nevertheless, the proposals have been made and the train's engines may have been revved. It is a matter of trying to get on board to ensure that the worst excesses of the proposals do not become the law of the land. It is also a question of fine-tuning some proposals and eliminating the worst. It behoves the Minister and the officials to take on board some new, interesting and enterprising proposals to fill the gap that may well become apparent as a result of the existing ones.

The committee will certainly give further consideration to this matter. We may invite the delegates to attend in November, if we are all alive at that stage. It is important that there be continual dialogue on this matter so our views will reflect reality. Sometimes people say that politicians have lost touch with what is happening but we have not done so. In our clinics and at meetings with various organisations, we deal regularly with the very issues the delegates articulated so well on behalf of their members. I thank the delegates for attending and I look forward to further contributions from them in the not-too-distant future.

The joint committee went into private session at 4.13 p.m. and adjourned at 4.15 p.m. sine die.