I am Margaret Dromey, CEO of Treoir, and I am joined by Ms Margot Doherty, assistant CEO. We are delighted to have the opportunity to discuss the disincentives in the social welfare and tax systems to the formulation of two-parent families. However, we do not have all of the answers. In the process of preparing our submission, many questions that will be pertinent for the committee emerged. I will briefly discuss Treoir to put into context our interest in this area. My colleague will take the committee through the submission, of which members have copies.
Treoir was founded in 1975 as the National Federation of Services for Unmarried Parents and Their Children. Its aim is to promote the welfare of unmarried families irrespective of whether they comprise a sole parent, cohabiting parents or a parent cohabiting with a step-parent. All of these people are of interest to Treoir because their legal situation is different from that of married families. This is our raison d’être. If married and unmarried parents were treated in the same way, an organisation like Treoir would not be necessary.
Membership of Treoir is open to professional agencies providing services to those working with unmarried parents. Members include maternity hospitals, self-help groups, adoption agencies, accommodation agencies, other specialist groups working with teenagers and some statutory bodies, such as the HSE. Our core principles are the recognition of the diversity of family life and the fact that all families, including unmarried families, have the same rights to respect, care, support, protection and recognition. We support and promote the rights of all children, as outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and firmly believe that they have a right to know and be loved and cared for by both parents.
We provide a specialist national information service for unmarried parents and those involved with them. We deal with approximately 10,000 calls per year regarding issues such as custody access, guardianship, joint parenting, registration of births, passport applications and so on, all of which are different for unmarried families. We produce a wide range of information publications. Committee members will have received a copy of our pack, which I hope they will find useful in their constituencies. We provide a series of workshops to those working in respect of the legal aspects of unmarried parents and co-parenting. Where parents live apart, we try to stress the importance of children having both parents in their lives. Nothing should prevent this from being the case. We are involved in promoting policy development and relevant research on the area. We provide a national resource centre for workers with young parents, as their legal situation differs from that of other parents. We are also involved in co-ordinating the teen parents support programme, a successful programme for young parents.
When Treoir was founded in 1975, Ireland was different. If a girl got pregnant and was not married, there was no option but to place the baby for adoption or to rush into a marriage. Keeping a baby on one's own was unacceptable. Fathers had no say in their children's lives. They did not figure legally at all. Even at that stage, however, our founders were committed to the notion of both parents being involved in children's lives. They called their organisation a federation of services for unmarried parents, not unmarried mothers, which would have seemed more appropriate at the time. They were ahead of their time.
Since then, our organisation has continued to be committed to joint parenting, as evidenced by one of our publications, entitled, "Family Links: Steps and Stages". This publication is intended to encourage both parents to be involved in their children's lives. It provides positive pointers for sole parents when discussing an absent parent with their children and on involving both parents in that child's life. We have run a number of successful radio awareness-raising campaigns on the importance to children of having both parents involved. We host workshops on shared parenting and were instrumental in promoting the "National Longitudinal Study of Children in Ireland", which is now known as the "Growing Up in Ireland" study. We did so because we were keen to see the impact on children of being raised by one parent and the benefits on having both parents involved. We are trying to conduct further analysis of the non-resident fathers interviewed as part of the longitudinal study. Over the years, we have constantly campaigned for equality of treatment for cohabiting couples by the Department of Social and Family Affairs and the Revenue Commissioners. We make pre-budget submissions to this effect every year. From the beginning, the idea of co-parenting permeates our work. We are particularly interested in considering the disincentives to cohabit in the social welfare and tax systems. Ms Doherty will run through our recommendations to the committee.