Tomorrow I will publish a review carried out by my Department of the one-parent family payment, which is the main income support scheme available for lone parents.
I think the report is a good one and I hope it will lead to a sensible debate about the future of supports for lone-parent families.
Unfortunately, the debate has tended to be polarised in the past, with some condemning lone parents and others being condemned for even raising the issue. This sort of debate does nothing for our society or for the development of public policy. Most of all, it does nothing to improve the lot of lone-parent families. We need to get away from what OPEN, the one-parent network, recently described as the "culture of blame". I hope this report will help us to do so.
This is a very complex issue and the report shows that. On the one hand, the report concludes that social welfare payments for lone parents do play a vital role. On the other, however, it shows that many lone parents and their children are still living in poverty and that half of unmarried recipients were still in receipt of a lone-parent payment 10 years on.
One of the most interesting points to emerge is that there has been a very significant increase in the number of lone parents who are working - even if their income from work is relatively low in many cases. Over half of all lone parents are now participating in the labour force.
Under the Action Programme for the Millennium this Government is committed to ensuring that everybody has the opportunity and the incentive to participate fully in the social and economic life of the country. The Government is committed to putting families at the centre of all our policies.
Key priorities include the child support needs of all families, the development of family-friendly employment policies, putting the Family Mediation Service on a statutory footing, setting up family and community centres and the expansion of the programme to develop the Department's local offices to provide family services, as recommended by the Commission on the Family.
These measures will benefit all families, including lone-parent families. However, the Government is also committed to putting in place a range of measures to support lone parents and to develop measures to facilitate them in returning to work.
In the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness we are committed to looking at new poverty targets for certain groups of people - in particular for children and for women.
Lone parenthood is one of the main contributors to the rates of consistent poverty that currently affect both women and children. Indeed, a recent UNICEF report has recommended that one of the key priorities in tackling child poverty is to reduce the level of poverty in lone-parent families.
How can we do this? Well, I think we have to listen to what lone parents and the groups that represent them are telling us.
Some months ago I launched the latest annual report of the Parents Alone Resource Centre in Coolock. They point out that lone parents want to provide for their families; they want "education, training and employment". PARC say that "the vast majority of lone parents would opt for independence and the opportunity to train and work if the option was genuinely available". This is not an isolated view.
It was very much echoed by the lone parents who participated in the research undertaken as part of my Department's review.
I want to help to make these objectives a reality. To do so we need a range of measures to help and support lone parents in returning to work. We need to overcome the barriers that are there at present and which have been identified by groups such as PARC, OPEN, Cherish and Treoir and which are outlined in the report.
I will soon be announcing details of an information campaign designed to ensure that all lone parents are fully aware of the various supports which are available to help them to participate in education, training and employment. However, this campaign will be only the first strand in a planned and comprehensive programme of measures which will form my Department's strategy to motivate, encourage and support lone parents to join the active labour force. Details of this programme will be announced over the coming months.
It is also proposed to localise the administration of the one-parent family payment to the Department's local offices and this will bring lone parents in closer contact with the wide range of supports which are available at these offices. Currently the payment is administered by the Pensions Services office in Sligo.
The other area in which we can improve support for lone parents is through increased maintenance from the other spouse or parent. Our studies show that 20 per cent of new claimants are receiving maintenance at an average of £30 per week. However, the indications are that support is often irregular and not sustained. Overall the percentage receiving maintenance is much lower.
I believe that support from the "absent" partner or parent should play a much more important role in providing support to lone parents. The review sets out a comprehensive analysis of options in this area. I will be considering these in detail, including the proposals that the system is more vigorously enforced and that lone parents be allowed retain an improved proportion of maintenance paid.
In the longer term, I believe the review plays a very useful role in highlighting the fact that a payment based on the contingency such as lone parenthood cannot respond to changes in family structure such as joint parenting and formation of new relationships. Disincentives to form relationships can only be resolved where the status of individuals is not relevant to the support received and I believe that we must, in future, examine options in relation to universal child support, individualisation and a move away from the contingency based system under which we operate at present.
Working together, we can make an important impact on the lives of lone parents and their children.