Irish Independent - November 10th 2005
Single mum subsidy to be axed within 18 months
THE controversial lone parent allowance is set to be axed in the next 18 months.
The benefit is currently paid to almost 80,000 people.
It will be replaced with a 'family-friendly allowance'.
The move comes as part of a package of radical new social welfare proposals.
The change will allow lone parents to live with a partner and remove disincentives that prevent them from working.
Social and Family Affairs Minister Seamus Brennan said he plans to replace the One Parent Family Payment before the next election in 18 months time.
'I asked the Office for Social Inclusion to write me a paper on lone parents,' he told the Irish Independent.
A reform of the current system is also being investigated by a 'Senior Officials Group' from various Government departments, as well as a Dail cabinet committee on social inclusion, headed by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
Mr Brennan said the aim of the reforms will be to remove the disincentives attached to the One Parent Family Payment.
The benefit is €168.10 a week where the parent has one child. 'We will reform the cohabitation rules. This is bad social policy. It is also bad social to start reducing the benefit after €7,000 of earnings. We want to restore the incentive to go to work. One way is to look at the income threshold,' he said.
The current system makes it extremely difficult for lone mothers to take up employment because their allowance starts to cut out once the parent earns above an income threshold of €146.50 per week, or €7,618 per annum. The benefit is also cut off if the recipient lives with a partner whether he is employed or not.
This means a single parent has an incentive to live separately from her partner if she wishes to retain her benefit.
In order to ensure that recipients of the One Parent Family Payment are not cohabiting, social welfare inspectors call on lone parents each year to ensure they are abiding by the conditions of the benefit.
Minister Brennan has previously criticised this practice.
The proposals being considered by Mr Brennan effectively envisage abolishing lone parents as a welfare category and instead targetting low income families with children. The new 'family friendly allowance', if introduced, will regard the living arrangements of the recipients as irrelevant, and will form part of the Government's strategy to reduce levels of child poverty.
The proposals were given a cautious welcome last night by lone parent support group, Open. The Manager of Open, Ms Frances Byrne, said: 'The devil will be in the details, but at face value we cautiously welcome it.'
She said she was 'glad to hear' Minister Brennan was acknowledging the disincentives against working and against cohabiting as 'bad social policy'.
Ms Byrne said: 'It's ludicrous that one side of the Department of Social and Family Affairs encourages shared parenting, and the other half punishes it.'
She said that the key factor her organisation will be looking at is the income threshold and by how much Mr Brennan intends increasing it.
'We want to see the threshold raised to allow someone to earn an income of €190 per week before the benefit starts to cut out, with an upper limit of €325 per week before it cuts out completely.'
The current upper limit is €293 per week. The One Parent Family Payment was first introduced in November 1990.
In 1997 it was reformed to allow lone parents to earn an income and still keep their benefit, but single parent groups have long criticised it for being set unrealistically low.
David Quinn
Social Affairs Correspondent
This page was updated on 11th November, 2005