Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 21 February 2017
33. Deputy Gino Kenny asked the Minister for Social Protection if he will report on the findings of the survey on income and living conditions, SILC, report; if he will make changes to the one-parent family payment as a result of this; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8441/17]
View answerWill the Minister for Social Protection report on the findings of the SILC report and make changes to the one-parent family payment as a result of those findings?
The Central Statistics Office, CSO, survey on income and living conditions, for 2015 shows that for lone-parent households, the consistent poverty rate is 26.2%, up from 25% in 2014, that the deprivation rate fell from 58.7% in 2014 to 57.9% in 2015 and that the at-risk-of-poverty rate is essentially unchanged at 36.2%, compared to 36.5% in 2014, a slight fall but not one that is statistically significant. The figures show that the consistent poverty rate for children fell by 1.2 percentage points to 11.5% in 2015. This means that 13,000 children were lifted out of poverty in 2015. The latest SILC statistics also show that being at work reduces the consistent poverty rate for lone parents by three-quarters to 6.7%. This demonstrates beyond doubt that the best way to tackle poverty among lone parents is through employment and that remains our policy.
The full impact of the recovery is not reflected in these 2015 statistics. Unemployment has now fallen to below 7% and long-term unemployment is below 4%, its lowest level in eight years. The positive impact of recent budgets on lone parents and the full impact of the increase in employment are also not reflected in these figures.
Continued economic recovery - together with these budget measures - is likely to have impacted positively on poverty rates since 2015 and this improvement is expected to continue over the coming years.
My Department's social impact assessments of budgets 2015, 2016 and 2017 are an indicator of this improvement. These showed a cumulative increase of 4% in the average household income of employed lone parents and 6.9% for unemployed lone parents, comparing favourably with an average household increase of 3.3%.
I am also committed to delivering the independent report on the one-parent family payment reforms as quickly as possible so that it can help inform budget 2018 discussions. This report will, among other things, take into account the poverty rates of those impacted by the reforms.
I have raised this issue numerous times with the Minister and I do not think he is for turning. The finding of the EU SILC report is quite explicit. One parent households in Ireland have suffered immeasurably. Two points in particular are damning for this country and previous Governments. In 2008 consistent poverty for lone parents was 17.8%. In 2015, that shot up to 26.2%. The latter was compounded by budgets from the Minister’s Government between 2012 and 2014 which took 3.5 times more from the bottom 40% of the population than from the top 30%. This is ideological warfare by the Minister’s party and Fianna Fáil. I want the Minister to comment on that.
We have not been in government for the past six years.
Fianna Fáil caused so much damage it has serious questions to answer.
It attacked single parents while in government.
It has serious questions to answer. I am asking the Minister to comment on the-----
Like what?
Deputy O'Dea should refrain.
The Deputy's party bankrupted the country. He even has a nerve to come back here.
If we followed the Deputy's policies we would be bankrupt.
Fianna Fáil bankrupted the country.
The Deputy quoted two years. Anyone can use statistics for two years and compare them. I will take a different year, 2006, when the boom was getting "boomier", when consistent poverty rates among lone parents were 33%. Consistent poverty rates for lone parents are lower than they were in 2006 - ten years ago - when we were in the middle of the Celtic tiger boom, when Fianna Fáil was in power and when consistent poverty among lone parents was much higher than it is now.
Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are the same.
The most important fact to take away from this and the quarterly national household survey is the powerful effect that employment has on poverty rates. There is a three-quarters reduction in poverty if a lone parent is at work. One can play around with the welfare system but welfare is not the answer. If employment can reduce poverty by three quarters, that should be the main part - although perhaps not the only part - of the answer.
The budget that I can take most responsibility for is the one I helped craft, namely, that for this year and, in particular, the welfare package relating thereto. As the Deputy knows, because of that package the budget benefited those on the lowest incomes the most. It was unfortunate that the Deputy could not vote for that budget.
I know the Minister likes spouting facts and he is selective but I will give him a fact that there is no denying: in 2015, two years ago, the richest 300 individuals in this country increased their wealth from €50 billion to €85 billion while lone parents suffered a cut of 18% in their very small incomes. If that is not ideological warfare, I do not know what is. The Minister and his party stand for that and the same is true of Fianna Fáil. Even today, the Children's Rights Alliance has given the Government a D grade in respect of children's rights. This Government is failing children. It is failing working people. It is particularly failing lone parents who have been discriminated against for the past seven or eight years, particularly by Fianna Fail and the Labour Party, unfortunately. Deputy Burton has a lot to answer for.
I do not know how the Deputy can say that is a fact.
These are facts.
We do not actually have-----
Facts.
The Minister should be allowed to speak without interruption.
Yes, they like to interrupt the facts.
They are facts.
We do not have a register of wealth in Ireland so I am not quite sure how the Deputy can know that as an absolute fact. There may be a survey or an opinion on it but that is a different matter. More importantly, we do not have a register of debt in Ireland and it is quite facile to calculate somebody’s wealth and not deduct the debts from that. There are some very wealthy people in Ireland who-----
Central Bank reports take out debts.
There are some very wealthy people in Ireland who people think are wealthy but when their debts are deducted, they are not wealthy at all.
They are poor.
They are in negative wealth. One thing I hope the Deputy would welcome from the SILC report - I did not hear him mention it although I know he has an interest in economic equality, particularly in income inequality - is the most interesting fact that our Gini coefficient has gone down and that income inequality in Ireland is at its lowest since 2009. Ireland is becoming more equal and I hope the Deputy will accept that and include it in his speeches because that is what the survey says. Using the Gini coefficient, we are the most equal English-speaking country in the world bar, perhaps, a few small islands somewhere.
