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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
May 2015 41
older are placed on
the Job Seekers
Allowance. They
are obliged to seek
and accept full-time
work under the
same conditions
and rules as apply
to single people
with no children.
Analysis by One
Family and SPARK
shows that these changes will make thousands of
working lone parents financially worse off. Some of the
financial losses for working lone parents are so signifi-
cant that many are likely to give up part-time
employment. The changes have thrown up many
anomalies which the Government has had to resolve.
Lone parents with caring responsi-
bilities will now remain eligible for a
half-rate Carer’s Allowance. Those
transferred to Job Seeker’s Transi-
tion will be able to access SUSI
(Student Universal Support in Ire-
land) maintenance supports.
Other anomalies are likely to
emerge including in the treatment of
access to back to education allow-
ances, in self-employment and in
enterprise supports. The intended
and unintended consequences of
this ill-though- through labour
market policy will cause lone par-
ents to give up work or full-time
education.
Recent research (Jaerling et al.)
suggests governments cannot solely
rely on labour-market participation to reduce lone
parent family poverty. Realistically lone parent fami-
lies have only half the time and resources to do the
same amount of domestic, parenting and care work as
a two parent family. Practical paid-employment
options are often limited to part-time and local
employment which are likely to be low paid.
Without the addition of measures targeted directly
at single parents’ income, the risks of single parenting
are likely to become even more significant. All the evi-
dence suggests lone parents in Ireland want to work.
Retaining the One Parent Family Payment would
enable the Government to target support in a way that
promotes, but does not exclusively rely on, paid
employment as the mechanism to address poverty. •
30,200 lone
parents will
lose OFP in
July, making
thousands
of working
lone parents
financially
worse off
“
MARY MURPHY
C
HANGES to the One Parent Family Payment (OFP)
are now coming to a head and are causing stress
and panic for many families. Over half a million
people live in families headed by a lone parent. These
families are much more likely to experience poverty
and social exclusion. In , % of them experi-
enced enforced deprivation. The Government needs
immediately to review the overall policy direction.
Five principles should inform the way forward: par-
ticipation of lone parents in the policy process;
investment in affordable and accessible childcare;
greater regulation of low paid and low hours
employment; ensuring no working lone parents are
financially worse off as a result of allegedly pro-em-
ployment reforms; and ensuring lone parents and
their children have equal care and parenting
options as parents and children in other family
formations.
It was in Budget that the Government
announced plans to restrict eligibility for the OFP to
those parenting alone whose youngest child is under
age seven. The same budget initiated phased reduc-
tions of income disregards for lone parents who had
some paid work to equal those of people on Job Seekers
Allowances (JSA). This would reduce the income disre-
gard from €pw to €pw. Subsequent reactions
and protests from lone-parents groups forced the Gov-
ernment to reconsider the severity of these decisions.
In the Government introduced a Job Seeker’s
Transition Allowance (JSTA) scheme for lone parents
with children aged seven to years. Then in Novem-
ber the Government abandoned the final €
euro cut to the lone parent disregard. Over the same
period, despite Government recognition that any
structural changes to lone parents payments needed
complementary investment in afterschool childcare,
only €m was invested in the provision of childcare.
After-school and holiday-time childcare remain inad-
equate, inaccessible and unaffordable.
These changes mitigated the severity of what was
planned, but they did not shift the overall policy direc-
tion. In the Government will effectively end
access to the OFP for lone parents whose youngest
child is seven or over. Up to , lone parents are
expected to transition from OFP this year with ,
moving on the nd July .
Those lone parents whose youngest child is between
seven and thirteen will be on the Job Seekers Transi-
tion Allowance with the same means testing rules as
the job seekers payment, an exemption from having to
seek full-time work and the accommodation of part-
time work. Those whose youngest child is fourteen or
But confusing,
sometimes
abortive, changes
to payments and
‘disregards’ are
holding them back
Lone parents want to work
