The transition from One Parent Family Payment onto Job Seekers Transition Payment will see more than 30,000 parents lose one parent family payments.
The government said the cut will give single parents an “incentive to take on more paid work”.
However…
A lone parent writes:
In 2005, I made the transition from a dignified state of independent human existence, into the precarious grace of living as someone society categorises as ‘disadvantaged’. My ears have been burning since.
At the height of the economic boom, while I was struggling to pay ever-increasing rents, and to put food on the table, people my age were earning six figures, going on three holidays a year, getting decking, buying a jeep, and complaining about having to pay for ‘those single mothers’.
They resented their taxes supporting women who, as they saw it, were promiscuous and irresponsible, and should not receive any kind of state support. When I pointed out that they were talking about my situation, they got embarrassed. They didn’t mean ‘people like me’. Except they did. They were talking about me, and it hurt.
The Mother and Child Act (1958) began the process of extricating women from the powerless and subjugated position which Church and State had placed them in. However, the stigma around parental responsibilities and the rights of women in this country still remains, and we have a very long way to go until full gender equality is achieved.
In 2015, in my own country, I am being discussed as if I were a stubborn type of weed, a problem to be frowned at. I have been utterly dehumanised by my government. My Minister for Finance tells me I am ‘allergic to work’. My Minister for Social Protection wishes to punish me, to ‘activate’ me – as if I am unwilling to make, or incapable of making, adult decisions regarding my own finances and family.
I wish to assert my rights; as a human being, as an Irish citizen, and as a parent, under the Constitution of our State. This position, this disadvantage, is a social construct which could easily be remedied. If Irish society were just slightly altered, there would be no such thing as ‘single mothers’, ‘single parents’, ‘lone parents’ – there would just be parents.
I could talk about the mixed messages our culture sends our young people: preaching abstinence in school, then selling hyper-sexualised femininine identities for the girls, and aggressive misogynistic machismo stereotypes for the boys.
I could talk about the utter lack of useful health education provided to our young people: the rudderless way we ignore their confusion and cover their experiences in shame. How we close down the conversations we should be having; conversations about self-esteem, emotional health, consent.
Conversations about contraception, STDs, HIV, and pregnancy. They are all part of the picture: confused young people with patchy and inadequate knowledge of their own bodies, and how to keep them healthy. Young people who are almost completely ignorant around conception and contraception. Some of these people will slip and fall into this ignoble category, becoming ‘single parents’.
I could talk about the ‘a’ word. If I mention it, will I have to wear it, a modern Hester? Because, when these young people (who are not in control of or educated about their own sexual health and family planning options) fall pregnant, they are left with abortion or adoption as their options. Both are extremely difficult and painful decisions, which can carry lifelong repercussions. Guilt. Fear. Shame. Blame.
The Church condemns abortion, and our secular State bans it. So, the two medical options which allow adults to decide when to have children, and how many they would like to have, are severely restricted in our modern Ireland. This is down to Church interference in education and legislation, which should have absolutely no place in a secular society. This is the first way we have been let down by the State: by allowing our young people to be kept in ignorance, and denied bodily autonomy.
This assumes one path to single parenthood. Young irresponsible girls ‘getting knocked up so they can get the council flat’. This is the stereotype, the ugly image, which our own government is using against us (Yet even in this, the role of the State is diguised, and the victims of archaic policies are made into the villains).
There are many ways to become a single parent. Bereavement. Divorce. Abandonment. Because we’re the irresponsible ones? The ones who stay, and raise our children alone. The ones who give up every hobby, social outlet, miniscule personal expenditure; because everything we have, every minute of every day, goes towards raising our kids. We are the irresponsible ones?
The people who abandon; the people who refuse to pay maintenance for their kids; the people who cannot by law be forced to spend one minute with their children; not all of them are men, but not one of them is forced by the State to be responsible, to contribute, and to share in their childrens’ lives and needs.
They can abdicate, refuse to visit, refuse to contribute, stand their kids up on visitation days, forget birthdays, miss every school meeting, and still not be judged or stereotyped, like the people they leave behind to raise children alone.
There are a growing number of fathers’ rights groups, and tied to this are fathers’ responsibilities. Neither is addressed under existing legislation. If a married man abandons his children, the Courts will try to enforce a maintenance agreement; but these hinge on tying access to their children with paying for their upkeep.
If a man doesn’t care about either, it is very difficult to pursue. For unmarried couples, this situation is even more difficult. Under existing legislation, if a parent refuses to look after their children, the law is pretty much powerless to make them.
Yet the ones who remain, who pick up the slack, who pull double duty, are the ones who get branded with an ugly stereotype.
If a partner dies, the entire cost of the funeral arrangements falls to the widow or widower, since the abolition of the bereavement grant. After the upheaval, they can fall upon the tender mercies of the Department of Social Protection. Which, after an impressive acreage of paperwork, may provide two years of One Parent Family Payment. For everyone except the previously self-employed, or whose spouses were previously self-employed.
[Former Minister for Education] Ruairí Quinn lied through his teeth, and then closed the doors of the colleges to low-income families. So, on a subsistence income, where do ‘lone parents’ find the money for CAO fees, registration fees, administration fees?
Since the grants have been cancelled, how are they meant to pay for books, printing, transport, childcare? This avenue out of destitution has been absolutely closed. JobBridge has annihilated low-income jobs, which had been a useful source of job-sharing or part-time work.
These positions are now endless unpaid internships, with no guarantee of a job at the end. The two most useful routes out of welfare dependency: a college degree or a foot-in-the-door job; have been effectively destroyed by this government.
These are the realities behind the nasty stereotypes and the manipulated statistics.’Lone parents’ do not just spring from the earth, created. They are the people left behind after bereavement or abandonment. They are the ones who decide to keep and love their children. They are the ones who remain. They carry the responsibility of holding a family together- of providing for the emotional, educational, spiritual and material needs of their children.
They forego a social life, their own needs, their health. They cope with this unending pressure alone, and they don’t complain. Maybe this is the problem. Maybe it’s the lingering dread, some scar on the psyche; of the mother and baby homes, of industrial schools and orphanages.
Perhaps, in the unspoken terror and guilt of not being good enough, or not being able to provide the same quality of life as two parents would, of surviving, of having picked the wrong partner; perhaps there is a deep subconscious dread that someone could just walk through the door and take your children from you. Because up until relatively recently, they could. Maybe that’s why ‘lone parents’ don’t complain. Or maybe they love their kids too much to ever want to make them feel like a burden.
However, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. While corporations, high earners, and the so-called ‘squeezed middle’ classes complain vigourously, and are rewarded with tax cuts and wage increases, the most vulnerable families in Ireland, already at twice the risk of poverty, are being hammered by new cuts to their (already meagre) incomes, every year.
Worse still, these cuts are being justified by an absolutely poisonous discourse, whereby the mediated social perception of ‘lone parents’ has become a despicable set of stereotypes and soundbites. The vocabulary of another era has crept in, and a tone of morality and the need for punishment underlies the political maneovures. As a member of this sub-human caste of unclean and immoral people, this (collective noun) ‘scourge’ of single parents, I can say that this is the second way I am being let down by my State.
My government has taken my sovereign position as a mother, under the Constitution, and they have degraded it. My parenting is not as good as other people’s parenting. My choices are not as valid. I have been living with poverty for a long time. We’re old friends. I can budget, scrimp, manage. The Celtic Tiger never roared for me, so these cost-cutting things other people are only learning to do now, I have been doing for ten years. Every year, there’s less to budget with, and it doesn’t do as much.
‘Lone parents’ in Ireland can be wholly vilified, because the rationale and stigma imposed by Catholic morality onto young unmarried women has been transmogrified into a class issue.
Only Joan Burton’s Labour party could resurrect this stigma, use it as justification to support punitive economic sanctions, and then claim to be trying to help anybody. A Labour Minister for Social Protection making these kinds of sweeping dismissive judgements, denouncing an entire section of people as a useless sub-class, is an extremely dangerous and worrying development.
Who will be next? Is everyone in poverty to blame for their own poverty? Why are the media not screaming about the way this attitude is heading, and the implications for how this government approaches social justice?
The reality is that ‘lone parents’ come from all kinds of economic backgrounds, come from all sorts of situations, and want to try to do their best for their children, just like any other parents.
Parent’s rights groups, St Vincent de Paul, and other agencies dealing with issues around human rights, children’s rights and poverty, have all denounced these cuts as unconscionable, and have warned of the catastrophic consequences. The Government refuses to listen.
So, ‘lone parents’ must be forcibly ‘activated’. This implies that, despite running a household and raising children alone, they are too lazy or inept to actually cope with making adult decisions, and they require these decisions to be made for them, by forcible interference.
This is the attitude of colony; of a dominant group enforcing rule over a vulnerable group, whose capacity to make decisions for themselves is denied, diminished and removed. ‘Lone parents’ cook, clean, do the laundry. They do the school run, remember every appointment and birthday, facilitate their kids’ social lives and sports fixtures. They love, explain, console, feed, comfort, calm,teach and worry. Alone.
As these families transition from One Parent Family Payment onto Job Seekers Transition Payment today they are facing hostile misrepresentation from a Department of Social Protection which appears to be encouraging the public to despise them.
JSTP is a much more precarious payment than OPFP. The list of conditions and requirements is virtually endless. Among them is a proviso that lone parents must set up and adhere to an ‘activation plan’.
This attaches specific conditions – attending courses, taking up training etc. – to their payment. Failure to comply results in a ‘penalty payment’. €44 will be taken off their JST payment.
So, a Department of Social Protection which has actively created a negative and damaging image of one parent families can now decide, based on a set of unfixed arbitrary conditions, to take money away from a family already subsisting on the absolute essential minimum it has been deemed possible to survive on.
This system is frighteningly open to abuse, and correcting mistakes could mean low income families getting further and further into debt, as it could take months to get to talk to superior officers or make appeals, to have claims reinstated. This is assuming that appeals officers would believe the word of a ‘lone parent’, given the abhorrent stereotype which has been created. This is an unacceptable position to put anyone into.
It is in the interests of everyone in Ireland to provide adequate and affordable childcare for all families. Those who don’t have children will be subsidised in their old age (in terms of healthcare, pensions, and supports), by this generation. We are an interdependent society. There is nothing preventing every school in Ireland offering after-school care. In France, everyone can access childcare until 6pm, daily.
A garderie, run by the schools, supports parents in working, for a nominal contribution of between €4-€8 every day. This is State-subsidised, and exists in every school. The ‘Scandinavian childcare model’ is the oft-repeated, much-touted, still-competely-absent reference point for this government.The challenge to having a ‘Scandinavian childcare model’ is the argument that this would require Scandinavian tax rates.
This argument shuts down the need to improve conditions and services. What this fails to include in the discourse is the fact that universal childcare is a reality in many countries. The tax increase argument is a complete and utter fallacy. We already pay more tax than the French, and we do not enjoy the same level of support for families and children.
Every day, I have to get up and read about myself, as my life is bandied about in the media, and I am rubbished as a worthless person in need of punishment, by my own government. I have a Masters degree. I apply for jobs every day, I send CVs, I do courses. My child means everything to me, and I try to be the best parent I can be. I would love to work, and have done everything I can to secure employment. I volunteer in my community, I try to stay positive. I am not the exception, I am the rule. Most single parents I know are exactly like me.
This government is selling a lie in the media; is selling an image of my life which is totally untrue. I have never complained about being poor. I have never complained about parenting alone. I love my child. We are a happy family. What I cannot tolerate is being told that I am a lazy sub-human who chooses poverty; a bone-idle blight on the economy, who must be aggressively bullied into employment I would otherwise not seek.
I am a parent, like any other parent. Why, with the prefix of ‘lone’, can I be utterly dehumanised, and stripped of my right to some kind of human dignity?
These cuts are utterly pointless. Once the costs of processing claims, sending out information, holding meetings, wasting oxygen in Dáil Éireann refusing to answer questions, etc. are added; when the actual negligible savings are pitted against the horrific impact, I doubt they will add up.
I won’t sit quietly by and let this happen. I want to be able to tell my child when they grow up, that I stood up for myself, and for other parents like me.
This government promised that these cuts were about improving the lives of families, and would not go ahead until adequate childcare was in place. That was a lie. Are we going to leave unsupervised seven year olds at home alone – all day, during the school holidays? Are we going to force them to make their own way home, unsupervised, through strangers and traffic? Some seven year olds are very mature.
However, I would not feel comfortable leaving any seven year old alone, while I worked an eight-hour shift. This age cut-off point is not about helping families or children: it is a purely arbitrary figure, pulled out of the air. It sounds like it might be based in some kind of logic.
The truth is, there is no law governing how old a child has to be before they can be left unsupervised: but regularly leaving a child under 14 alone can result in intervention by social services, who will assess the child’s maturity, whether they are neglected, and the likelihood of harm coming to them.
The Department of Children and Youth affairs will have to communicate closely with the Department of Social Welfare, to assess whether these children are suffering from real deliberate neglect, or just the consequences of government policies.
This is cold reality. Joan Burton’s policies will impoverish families, and endanger children. Not spin, not optics, not another political party, trying to score points. Just an ordinary parent, an Irish citizen, who cannot understand how the stroke of a pen has led to my ending up as somehow subhuman.
This is not reform. This policy needs to be abandoned, until affordable childcare is a reality for every parent in Ireland, and we can all work the full-time jobs we desperately want, with peace of mind that our children are safe and cared for. In the meantime,
I would ask the Minister to stop speaking for me, stop claiming to be acting in my best interests as if she knows better than I do what they are, and to actually listen to the people she is paid to represent.
(Photocall Ireland)
This is all very confused and illogical. It is based on a number of strawmen. I agree that the cuts are a retrograde step but the reasons for them put forward by the author (prejudice, heartlessness, the church?, uncaring society?) are total BS.
I’ve never seen so many straw(wo)men in what could only be described as a rant against society.
Then you didn’t read [redacted]’s piece in the Irish Times last month.
“lone parent” is a bit of an oxymoron really.
The Irish Times are also trying to reverse engineer biology and convince us that two men can be “parents”.
that kind of thinking is so april.
Very Powerful. Am I missing something, can’t see who wrote it?
Remarkable
And stark
But you are not Alone
Change the header Broadsheet
Brave She Stands
Brave She Walks
Love Cherish Shareing She Gives
sh1t like this is the reason I dont go on facebook anymore
but yes the recession has been bad on the already disadvantaged
This is a tough one, but it was ludicrous to expect tax payers to fund this lifestyle for ever. Have as many kids on your own as you want, but don’t expect me to pay for it.
Fool.
Well then I hope you’ll be out campaigning for abortion rights the next time it’s up for a vote.
Live as long as you want, but don’t expect my kid to pay for your state pension… oh, wait, he will.
See also: income taxes paid by kids as they grow up which pay for healthcare you’ll use, emergency services provided for you, basic fundamental services you’ll avail of and so forth.
You idiot.
Your child won’t pay for anybodies pension. If he’s like me and work’s 40 years, it’ll actually be 50 years if I retire at 67, my tax would well have covered my pension cost along with every thing else I pay tax for
Do you actually think state pensions work that way?
Awwwwww, how cute!
Don’t be idiotic, my point was after 50 years of working my tax as contributed well more to the state than il ever get back. I throughly understand how a tax system works. You clearly don’t if you think someone should have a pension, after a life working because the disagree with a particular welfare payment.
“you think someone should have a pension, after a life working because the disagree with a particular welfare payment.”
You no english good. You english better, we english together after.
(And then you can tell me how you think the state will be able to fund healthcare and essential services – or even just operate at all – when you’re 65 if there aren’t any kids around when you’re 30).
Did you even read that Eamonn ?
Hope you never get sick, Eamonn.
Or lose your job and struggle to get another one.
Hope you never have a disabled child, or a sick child, or lose someone close to you that provides for your household.
Hope you never get old. Or old and sick.
Hope none of these things happen to you, because if they do, according to your own philosophy, you’re on your own.
This lifestyle? What the actual fuck?
somebody’s kids will be paying your pension, mate.
Do you think societys atitude to absent fathers is in any way to blame?
You sir, are a fvckwit.
Eamonn, You must have a very stereotypical view of the single parent. Well this single parent walked out of an abusive, threatening situation with my partner for the safety of my daughter and myself. I was in the middle of setting up my own business and had several people on the payroll. Single parent payment allowed us to survive. They took that payment away from us last summer because Molly turned 10 and at a time when business was slow. There was no warning it cost us our home and my business,
This change in the law only affects “Single Parents” who are working freelance or who are self employed. Those sitting on their backside just change from one form of payment for another. People like you making unqualified judgements are whats allowing the government to get away with this.
We didn’t chose to be single parents it always the mother that has to put up with this sort of rubbish, when you have actually live the life of single parent then you understand no point in try to be the big man with tax pay single monthers do work yA know
Has a masters and can’t get a job?? I scraped my leaving cert and have worked all through the tiger and after. And was able to change jobs recently. There is plenty of work out there. It may not be in the field she has her masters in, or at a wage that she feels that she is owed, but if she wanted one, she could get one.
She has to factor in the cost of child care and can’t take any ole McJob that’s going.
Her kid is 10, she doesn’t need child care.
Seriously? if you think it is ok to leave a 10 year old unsupervised for 8 hours a day, you really should have kids.
Christ your thick. Ever hear of school?
idiot
Ever here of summer fupping holidays? 3 months is a long fupping time to be left for 8 hours a day unsupervised.
Jonotti, what school did you go to where 10-year-olds were in there from before work starts at 9am to after work ends at 5pm?
Lucky for some having a job that starts at 9. My mother worked from 5am till 8 walked us to school and then started her second job in IPL from 9-3. If you want kids then you need to sacrifice. Most single parents are just moaning lazy scroungers. Unfortunately you can’t weed them out with hurting the minority who are real single parents.
Ever hear of term time? A ten year old can go home on their own for two hours. The parent can schedule shifts to suit. There are tons of options that I see working parents use.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha id like to see how long you last in a job if you are applying for term time every year, there is no way a company would lose a employee for three months every year and keep them in a job.
A month of term time. A month of leave. Two weeks with parents. Pay for a creche for a month. All you see are barriers to working when there are endless solutions.
Get with the real world.
Yeah i am sure all employers would be cool with that sure its not like most employers won’t let you take all your holidays together so taking all your holidays and another month off should be no problem to them.
Exactly. Kid should be out earning his own crust at 10. Bring back the mines!
Their small hands are great for cleaning munitions.
yeah being ten you don’t need to be fed, cloathed or minded anymore, sure the child should be making T shits for HnM
yeah being ten you don’t need to be fed, cloathed or minded anymore, sure the child should be making T shits for HnM
In my previous job, in a call centre, there were lots of single mothers, who worked 10-4 or 9:30-2. Her rant seems like she is bitter about the few who made hay while the tiger purred, while she had to look after a child she brought into the world.
Lots of single parents have retired family that can mind their kids during work hours but plenty have no one.
One of my friends had no “retired family” to mind the kids. Had a 14yo and 3yo twins. Was able to work 0930-1430 every day. She was able to do this, and come on the very occasional night out with us. She had to make sacrifices, but she was willing to do that for her family.
Not to question the accuracy of your story but was she a single parent? and how could she afford childcare for 4 children when most working people i know struggle to afford it for 1 or was it a case of going back to work and having the older kids mind the younger ones? and was she in no recent of any benefits cause i find it surprising that on a part time wage you could financially be able to support 5 people. I am just curious.
I don’t know the ins and outs, she had 3 kids, a 13/14yo and a boy and a girl twin aged 3 years. The eldest was in school while she worked. She left the twins with a childminder for the 5 hours she was at work. Maybe she got a preferential rate, not sure. But its 100% true. She was always stressed, but managed.
Ok think about what you just said. Would it not be better to take a bit of pressure off people like your friend with a bit of government support then have kids being raised by parents that are stressed to the max?
I was one of those, only possible when the allowance made up the difference. Surviving on 200 quid a week from a part time job is pretty near impossible as a single person let alone a parent.
This woman’s child is about 10. I don’t know how feasible it is but if I were her I would think seriously about emigrating.
She’s been claiming benefits for the past 10 years, I don’t think that she has that sort of initiative.
She has educated to higher level than most of the workforce, she should put it to use and get a job.
And do what with her kids?
Organise a child minder; work part-time or flexi-time; organise with some other parents to look after one another’s kids on X days each, etc
Most childminders don’t take kids for full 8 hour days, a job to suit someone who has a masters degree generally demands more working hours then a 40 hour week so that part time out and as for flexi time those jobs don’t grow on trees but fair play to anyone who has got one and some other parents, maybe she doesn’t have some other parents to take her kids. Its easy to write these things down in a quick online comment it is a lot harder to put them into practice.
“…a job to suit someone who has a masters degree”
– lots of people work jobs that might not be the best fit for them (I certainly have). I didn’t have guaranteed free money from the state, though, so I took the jobs until I could get something better.
It was you who said “She has educated to higher level than most of the workforce, she should put it to use and get a job.” so i was only replying to that statement. See you are looking at this backwards you think that it is free money from the state going to single parents where as i see it as an investment in our future that these children will be raised and educated right and become an even more contributing member of society.
It’s a simple as this DONE HAVE KIDS IF YOU CAN AFFORD THEM, how hard is that for people to get. The second solution NO PAYMENT unless both parents are named, the only way the mother can’t know is if she was raped(of course awful) or was so drunk she can’t rememver or had sex with so many men it could be anyone’s.
“DONE HAVE KIDS IF YOU CAN AFFORD THEM”
Well, that was a well-reasoned and clearly expressed position. You sir, are a credit to your parents’ choice of educational establishment, and a tribute to all their hard work and sacrifice.
Spell check changed it sorry
Also well done on ignoring the second point. I hope that’s not how you go about your daily life. Ignoring something you have no logical answer to.
Firstly abortion isn’t available in this country, secondly you want to shame women to give someone rights to a child that they want nothing to do with? you seem like a class act, maybe you should think about your plan there a bit more then just blurting out ideas.
Shame women. So having sex is shameful is it? Explain how saying “X is the father he won’t help” where is the shame there. It’s a reasonable question to ask “who’s the father” then “can explain how you have no idea who he is”. Why is it bad thing for people to take personal responsibility.
Shame women by making them reveal information to a public service that they might not have told their closest confidents
“the only way the mother can’t know is if she was raped(of course awful) or was so drunk she can’t rememver or had sex with so many men it could be anyone’s.”
Its not a bad thing for people to take personal responsibility but by putting a fathers name on the birth cert even an absent fathers name it gives him rights to the child and also they can refuse child payments, it happens all the time.
Jeez Rob, I hope it always stays fine for you.
I come from a single-parent family, my Dad worked. Plenty of single parents seem to manage working and raising kids on their own (the majority of whom don’t have a masters, I’ll wager).
I come from a single parent family my mam worked all her life but she had the advantage of having some family to mind me, plenty don’t have that option. This makes me think even less of what you have said as coming from a single parent family i thought you would realise the difficulties they face.
My guess is Rob’s single parent situation consisted of one Dad surrounded by six doting aunts.
Yes Lilly, because men are incapable of raising children and probably shouldn’t be allowed. Horridly sexist statement there.
No, my Dad lived in real world where you take responsibility for making a good life for your kids, even if life has thrown some obstacles in your way, rather than sitting around expecting a handout.
Or as i see it, giving single parents a helping hand as to not make a difficult situation even more difficult.
I also believe that the state should help single parent families – but I don’t believe that the writer of the letter wants to further their position.
Couldn’t find a job in 10 years? Rubbish – the child has been at school 5 years, in that time they could have gotten a doctorate, or some other training that would enable them to get a job that they could fit around raising the child. But it’s easier to let the earth spin on its access and cash the cheque every month…
Rob G doesn’t think women should get paid either on maternity leave.
What’s your solution Rob.. don’t have kids at all is it?
By the way, did you see my response. You didn’t read the article linked to, it seems
https://www.broadsheet.ie/2015/06/23/maternity-hang-up/#comment-1400764
Maybe she is just thinking about her kids. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/eric-bettinger-why-stay-home-parents-are-good-older-children
In case you don’t read it again..
Here you go –
@ Rob_ G.
“why would employers pay full salaries to employees that won’t be turning up to work for 6 months(?)”
It’s great you turned up at work and all to be flutting around online.. aren’t you a great fella altogether.
It’s in the article linked to above, why –
“Recruiting and training new employees to replace women who leave the workforce after having a baby costs $47bn – far higher than the $28bn cost of the extra benefits, it found.
Don’t play the child-from-single-parent-family card Rob, that’s Drogg’s Card and he’s the only gay in the village when it comes to it.
@ Anne – employers are able to pay employees on maternity leave as it stands; some do, some choose not to. Obviously, the employers that do find that it is worth their while, and the employers that don’t do not, or can’t afford to. Not sure what bearing any of this has on the current discussion.
As a single parent who works full time for myself but for many years relied on benefits I noticed it is far easier for single parents who have good support networks. I had unreliable support but could not afford a crèche on my income along with rent and car payment (small but necessary). It’s not always as easy as ‘get a job’, for my experience it was hair raising.
“@ Anne – employers are able to pay employees on maternity leave as it stands; some do, some choose not to. Obviously, the employers that do find that it is worth their while, and the employers that don’t do not,”
Eh, yeah they’re able to pay.. and yeah, some do, some don’t.
But that’s not what you said before. Here in case you forgot – ““why would employers pay full salaries to employees that won’t be turning up to work for 6 months”
Re – ” Not sure what bearing any of this has on the current discussion.”
You just don’t seem like a champion for women’s rights Rob. Just sayin’.
@ Anne – I still not sure what you are talking about
“Rob G doesn’t think women should get paid either on maternity leave.” – that’s not true. Everyone who goes on maternity leave is entitled to 6 months maternity benefit – this is a good thing.
I was saying that employers (Vodafone, in this instance) doesn’t see it as being in their interest to pay their employees’ full salary while they are on maternity leave.
“You just don’t seem like a champion for women’s rights Rob. Just sayin’.”
– I’m arguing that women should take part in the workforce, you’re arguing that once they’ve made some babies they are as good as economically useless; don;t think I’m the one who is not supportive of women’s rights…
this is really really bad
“At the height of the economic boom, while I was struggling to pay ever-increasing rents, and to put food on the table, people my age were earning six figures, going on three holidays a year, getting decking, buying a jeep, and complaining about having to pay for ‘those single mothers.’ ”
quality control at broadsheet gone on summer holidays?
Well said.
Unconditional basic income should be every citizen’s right. http://www.basicincomeireland.com/
Why?
Why not? There’s enough to go round. Austerity is a lie. Inequality is real.
Because when it was tested for five years in Canada, it proved to be cheaper than the dole and everyone had a higher quality of life:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome (Yes, wikipedia. Skip the article, read the analysis paper linked in the introduction and the citations – broadsheet automoderates comments with multiple links)
“only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren’t under as much pressure to support their families, which resulted in more teenagers graduating. In addition, those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did. Forget found that in the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 percent, with fewer incidents of work-related injuries, and fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic abuse.[7] Additionally, the period saw a reduction in rates of psychiatric hospitalization, and in the number of mental illness-related consultations with health professionals.”
The Green Party proposed something similar in the run-up to the UK general elections, and I seem to recall it being suggested that, based on the Green Party’s own figures, it would cost more than the NHS, defence, and some third very expensive item combined(!)
Incorrect, Rob_G: they actually found that the cost of universal basic income would fit within the current benefits cost, with a few tweaks (e.g. having the tax incentive on private pensions). http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/Policy%20files/Basic%20Income%20Consultation%20Paper.pdf
Sorry, *halving* the tax incentive, not having.
They dropped it from their manifesto in the end when it was pointed out to them that it would cost £280bn a year to fund.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/green-party/11383801/Greens-ditch-citizens-income-from-election-manifesto.html
Actually they dropped it because of an internal disagreement about whether basic income should be means-tested or genuinely universal. The proposal was revenue neutral.
The problem with the idea isn’t economical, it’s psychological. Some people just think that all people will be genuinely happy on the dole and won’t ever contribute, that humans feel no need to accomplish anything in their lives, and that basic income is a travesty as a result.
Somehow it being a cheaper way to do things that results in higher quality of life for more people is just not considered. Nor is the price of the welfare system with all the people needed to run it and oversee it and audit it and so on. Alternatives like mincome are dismissed as being naive and childish, even though the math works and even though it’s been tested and found to work, and even though the we’ve changed how we manufacture things so much that there literally aren’t enough jobs for the population anymore and we’re in the process of doing that to service industries too. No, we’ll happily keep on running into that wall and wondering why our face hurts…
Hear hear!
This simply highlights the profoundly substandard provision of child care in this country. Largely unregulated, overpriced and exclusionary. There are many parents in this persons situation. It suggests a real lack of political will and common sense. Also, the fact that child benefit is still given to everyone is a f***ing disgrace. People earning above a certain amount simply shouldn’t get it. The funds should be redirected and at least help towards prioritising adequate and heavily subsidised child care for those who need it most. Crackers!
Spot on Digs, spot on. i remember a friend of mine saying “I use the child benefit to pay into the SSIA” . oh how i chuckled at the avarice!
There is an argument that child benefit to better off people will be recouped through progressive taxation, and that it would too expensive to have a means test for it (but yes, it does seem strange to be giving money to people for having kids, regardless of how many children that they have, and regardless of their income).
Burton had it right when she said impoverishing single parents to incentivise them to work can only come after a state-wide public childcare service was established. I mean how, especially in summer, are single parents just getting back to work supposed to afford the kind of childcare that costs a working two-parent family half their income to pay for?
TL;DR
Who are the most vunerable when it comes to austerity measures? Its kids, read a figure recently that almost 1 in 10 presenting at homeless hostels were kids. Burtons measures will impact widely. Water charges should have been the straw that broke the camels back, this may well be it…..
BS Any chance of organsing an event to raise money for homeless shelters and groups that support single women?
That is a great idea fluffy.
how about changing that from single women to single parents…
How about parenting
On its own
Parenting
Im all for it, single parents apologies I still had the article in mind
BS? What say you?
Could try get the Chocolate Factory off Parnell St. Do an evening of poetry , music , story telling etc.
This is a really great idea. Do it, do it!
So you haven’t worked since 2005 just because you had a kid? You’re only complaining now because your gravy train has ended.
You obviously don’t know how hard it is to raise kids.
If that’s your idea of a gravy train, you need to set your sights higher.
It feels like you’re not even trying anymore.
Reading this breaks my heart. It is hard to see parents and kids being squeezed even more by our backwards society. People like Paulo, Miko and Eamonn Clancy above should be spit on and shamed in the street for their abhorrent ideals. These men and i used the term lightly, who think it is ok to look down their noses and shame women who are just trying to raise their kids and give them a decent future are the foundations of a broken of backwards conservatism society. I have two children and my wife stays home to take care of them which at times is a serious financial strain but if she went out and worked almost her entire wages would go on childcare and our children would be raised by the bare minimum of caring in one of the many franchised creches thats employees are not educated correctly to care for children. So if this is what a two parent family must go through i can’t imagine the struggles single parent families are go through. I think people need to start emailing their local TD and communicating their disgust at this attack on some of the most needy in our society, we are literally standing by and watching as our government takes candy from a baby.
Rubbish Drogg.I know exactly how hard it is. The first two years are tough but her kid has been in school for 6 years. She has had plenty of tine to get s job snd get an au pair to help out.
Ultimately though she made the decision to have a child. She chose the father. It’s her life and her responsibilitiy.
Get an au pair, do you hear yourself? au pair’s aren’t free you know. So how do you know exactly how hard it is? are you a single parent leaving your kids for 8 hours a day on there own? You sound like a real piece of work, belittling women who are just trying to raise their kids right, while telling people to go off and get an au pair, your man card must be fully pressed.
Drogg, I have to commend you on your patience. These comments are some of the most infuriating I’ve ever read. I don’t know how you continue to engage as calmly as you do. I’m glad you do.
jonotti is a troll
I have been told I have a tendency to lose it in my comments so I am keeping my cool for the moment.
‘Get an au pair to help out..’ What on earth makes you think she has a spare room to accommodate an au pair? Highly unlikely.
Raising them is hard for the first 4 years alright. Mine have got after school until 3.30 and then they go to a childminder (with 2 of their classmates) for 3 hours until I pick them up at 5. This happens 2 days a week. I work a 4 day week and the 5th day is worked from home. For the other 3 days myself and 2 other parents have a rota system where one of us looks after the others kids. So Childcare sorted for €60 a week and the kids spend all their week with their classmates. It can be done if you can be arsed
Incidentally I know a single mother who works as a childminder. Takes 4 kids every day, €10 an hour, no registration, not a word to the revenue. Takes the dole and every other benefit going. She’s going to an all-in resort in Mexico for the month of July.
So because one single parent you know is doing nixer’s they are all inherently evil tax avoiding scumbags? Thats nice that you can sort your situation to suit you but personally that wouldn’t work for me as i can’t work from home am lucky if i am finished work before 8pm and i also work weekends which wouldn’t help the situation. See it is a case of just because your situation is ok doesn’t mean everyone else’s is.
I’m merely saying that from 2009 on she could have got a job and worked out a childcare solution. It’s really not that difficult to get a job – you should look into it as yours sounds terrible
And the parent I’m referring to isn’t doing “nixers” she’s working as a full time child care professional with no qualifications to do so whilst claiming job seekers allowance, rent and everything else going and paying no tax.
Yes and as i said above because one person you know does that are we supposed to chastise all single parents?
what about that other tax dodger DOB…a person the revenue knows all about and does nothing and the government in cahoots with him…but yeah lets focus on the few pennies this woman hangs onto
Exactly. The Occupy movement got it right. The country is being run in the interests of the DO’Bs at the expense of its citizens. Why?
That’s how a good parent manages. It’s much easier to say no its too much hassle to work. The childminding thing is rife with welfare leeches. They could easily pull 60k gross equivalent for a few hours a week.
60k gross, you are living in a fantasy land and we are not discussing unregulated childminder we are discussing the cuts to single parent payments.
4 kids, 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, €10 an hour is €3200 a month, 10 months a year works out at €32k undeclared income. That’s equivalent to Drogg needing €50k for the same take-home . Do it for 11 months (have to take the month in Mexico out) and it’s closer to €55k
Seriously Drogg – your wife’s missing a trick here
I’d rather my own kids where well taken care of, then 4 other peoples kids getting mediocre care.
The welfare payments, benefits and free house alone would be the equivalent of 35k gross. Getting easy tax free money on top of that would put you in a well off category.
That sounds like it was copy and pasted from the front of the daily mail.
“It can be done if you can be arsed” is a load of shite. You don’t know this woman’s situation. You’ve worked out a good solution, but maybe not everyone is in the same position that you are. Maybe people like the writer of this piece don’t have access to an affordable childminder, or they can’t work 1 day a week from home or have access to other dependable parents for a rota system. A lot of the arguments put forth by a lot of people here seem to be based entirely on “Well this is what I was able to do, so everyone else should be able to do the same”. What are people supposed to do if they don’t have the kind of resources you do then?
Unfortunately for every person who finds a solution there are 10 who sit in the can’t be arsed corner. The government has to find a way of cutting unnecessary social welfare payments and this is one way. As in any sweeping change there’s a middle ground of people caught up in this – perhaps the OP – who are genuinely inconvenienced financially. Hopefully the system will evolve to help them.
Yes it is totally unnecessary taking care of the citizens of our nation. Maybe we should stop all social welfare and go full thunder dome on who gets what.
Honestly Jonotti, has anyone explained to you where babies come from? Because given what you’ve written here, either you’re just a deliberate troll, or you are woefully ignorant about the basic facts of life and someone ought to just tell you what they are, starting from the beginning.
+1
In the piece above she does call for better sex education.
She trys to blame that for her current situation. Every person knows that if you ride bareback then you can get pregnant. You can’t plead ignorance.
You do know that no contraception is 100% effective, right? Not even condoms.
You are always arguing the unlikely scenario. The reality is no condom used.
You know there are other types of contraception that people use right? and it is not that uncommon ether condoms are 97% effective the 3 out of every 100 rides that they don’t work. Also it is none of your business how people got pregnant we live in a society that works together to take care of those in need something our current government has long forgotten so it doesn’t matter if they used contraception or not what matters is what we as a society are going to do to support them and help them to raise a functioning member of society that will put what they got and more back into the system through tax.
Hey Jonotti, you know you live in a country where rape without contraception happens and abortion’s effective illegal if you’re poor, don’t you?
@Drogg, you are using misleading information as fact. Each condom is 97% effective. That doesn’t mean that if you use 100 that 3 won’t work. Stop trying to twist things to suit your agenda.
Mark also utilising the extreme scenario argument technique.
@weldoninhio statistically 3% of 100 people is 3 and 97% of 100 is 97 so i understand their spectrum for testing was probably a lot bigger pool of people but that is still a 3% failure rate of a product. So technically i am not being misleading i am being clinically factual.
So let’s say she was in a happy relationship and they decided to have a child and then the man decided he preferred sexy fun time with the new girl in work to nappy changing and split. According to Jonotti her situation is her fault for not choosing a man more carefully.
Life’s simple when you’re perfect, right Jonotti?
He could have got cancer and died ether.
He could have been a bad boy scumbag that she wilfully let impregnate her. Meanwhile nice guys like me were cast away. Now I have to pay for his kid.
And you have to pay for the fire brigade even when its not your house that’s on fire too, it’s a disgrace joe…notti.
Trust me Jonotti, you’re not a nice guy. Way more likely you’re a passive-aggressive weasel.
Better education would be a start
The argument for having plenty of time to get a job does not wash. All jobs now are either Jobsbridge or there are no part time jobs that are suitable. It is not that easy
What an oxygen thief you are jonotti, honestly you are despicable fecal stain on life. Get into the sea.
I’m a better person than you.
Au-pair is it? Shure I can just imagine how easy that must be with NO freaking money. Our childminder who studies part time so only works with us five hours a day costs $300 a week living out.
Even at a very conservative estimate of paying someone who lives in, one third of that sum, as an employer you still have to pay for:
Wages – $100
Elec / Gas – an additional $11 a week
Water – an additional $11 a week
Provision of a mobile phone – $5 a week (it’s an ancient iPhone 3)
Tax and insurance for car / public transport costs $20 a week
That nearly an additional $150 a week just to be able to attend interviews with no guarantee of a job in sight. That is presuming you live in the catchment area of a plethora of employment opportunities that will cover your au-pairs wages, the cost of renting a bigger house so they can have their own bedroom (Fact: You can’t bung them in the shed with the garden tools) and normal week-in / week-out expenses.
Cos we all know there are a TON of them about at the moment….
@ jonotti
Blow me
Babies shouldnt be eating candy
I know i just thought it sounded good. I knew someone was bound to call me on it.
I remember a time when Joan Brutal won the faith of women and men for protecting those that needed a leg up. Amazing what the sniff of ministerial power can do to a once decent politician.
It’s like on assuming office they’re suddenly possessed by the same lizard people who inhabited the last crowd.
Let he who has not claimed social welfare, at some time or other, cast the first stone.
At the same time, my partner and I who both work can’t afford to have a baby, we rent and we cant afford to buy. What about us? Around the corner Jimmy and Jemeima have a host of kids and a grand house supplied by the govt. and not a sniff of a job.
It’s the culture and the govt. that are to blame.
Bort in reality free or subsidised childcare should be available to all but it will never happen in this country.
Bort, get out now. Don’t hang around this godforsaken country putting your life on hold any longer. Seriously. You have only one life.
I often think the same Lilly
But aren’t some smart proper people like you and me needed? If we all left they’re going to burn this motherfupper down Lilly
True Joe but at times it feels uphill all the way.
Jimmy and Jemeima.. Living the dream in Ballymun.
Any chance of the ‘click to continue’ on a wall of text this big?
“JSTP is a much more precarious payment than OPFP. The list of conditions and requirements is virtually endless. Among them is a proviso that lone parents must set up and adhere to an ‘activation plan’.
This attaches specific conditions – attending courses, taking up training etc. – to their payment. Failure to comply results in a ‘penalty payment’. €44 will be taken off their JST payment.”
Attending courses and taking up training, while your child is in school i assume, is considered to be a ‘precarious’ condition? Jaysus feckin wept.
Yeah, because kids never get sick, taking courses is completely free with absolutely no side costs of any kind, and there’s a guarantee at the end that they’ll be able to get a job that pays enough that their net income is higher than if they were on the dole.
Could you not have worked “we all partied” into your post at all?
Mark, lets deal with these one by one:
– “because kids never get sick”: so because u have kids, who, as u suggest, may get sick, u shouldn’t do training or courses or work etc? Solid stuff.
– “taking courses is completely free with absolutely no side costs of any kind”: at any point in the above did she mention the costs involved? What costs are involved in your opinion? Should costs ever be involved, regardless of size, with training provided by the state?
– “there’s a guarantee at the end that they’ll be able to get a job that pays enough that their net income is higher than if they were on the dole.” So we’re really at the “i couldn’t be arsed putting in some work and effort unless i have a guarantee at the end of it all” stage on this? This in my view supports the forced activation policies of the government, to be perfectly honest.
Owen:
– Go on a training course. Have your kid get sick. Then see if the course will let you take the time off you need, or if they’ll automatically fail you which then results in you being financially penalised. That’s the point you missed.
– Let’s think about what it’d be like to do, shall we? Travel costs. We don’t bring the course to you, you come to the course, so bus tickets. And they’re cheap to you and me, who have jobs, but the point is that the people on those courses don’t and money’s beyond what you’d think of as tight. And buses don’t always get you from A to B in a fast manner, so now you have to leave early in the morning and don’t get home till later, so now you have more childcare costs. Any materials the course needs, whether they be as simple as pens and paper or as extravagant as textbooks, who pays for that? A 30 euro textbook isn’t much to you, but that’s a hell of a lot of money if you’re on the dole. These are all small things you and I don’t have to worry about day to day, but that’s why we shouldn’t be designing the system rather than an endorsement of it.
– Why did you go to college? Because with a degree you can get a job. Four years of your life at 18 so you have a steeper earning curve at 22. That’s the deal. If it was just about learning, you wouldn’t see people going to college to become actuaries. It’s qualification for a job, and when that job looks unlikely, people stop enrolling. Did you not notice that in the enrolment figures for IT after the dotcom bubble popped in the late 90s?
Or does that one only apply to “good” people who go to college and not “bad” people who need to do stupid FAS courses?
Mark, she’s got a masters.
Owen, they don’t exempt you from courses just because you happen to have higher-level fetac-recognised qualifications than the course instructors.
And yeah, that is as stupid a policy as it sounds. You’d imagine we’d hire masters-level qualified people and have them at least teach the courses, but no…
John I’m only dancing
Broadsheet
Ye’ve opened doors to some right ûnts
http://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/2112-gay-byrne/633846-unmarried-mothers-in-ireland/
This post as done nothing but bring out the dregs of society. … Poor me, i shouldn’t have to shame myself by ACTUALLY KNOWING who the dad is, that was an actually response to a post. It would be women shaming to ask how they don’t know the father. Genuine case should have all the help they need but most cases are not genuine.
Most cases are not genuine? Citation needed.
Bertie – You are too polite. Anomanomanom – you are a hateful, lie-spewing, slime-dwelling little toad.
Why? I’m asking a question. Why can the father not be named… Replying with such excellent venom sums your type up. Dregs of society is a name to good for you.
It is your unfounded assertion that but most cases are not genuine. that puts you among the slime.
You obviously live in a little bubble. I can tell you for a fact, from witnessing it myself, the vast majority of cases are “I don’t know who the daddy is” then you find out they live together or the mother caught selective amnesia to get her payment and her current boyfriend just happens to not be the father.
A couch load of capitalist cheerleading interns has just arrived at FGHQ to post comments on this.
I can play this game: Isn’t there a shinner poll on the Journal.ie you should be green thumbing? Mary Lou usually has links to them on her FB page, although I’m not sure what the broadband is like in the Cooley Mountains.
I am appalled at the lack of care/empathy displayed in some of these comments. I was born in 1971, lived on a corporation estate for most of my childhood, both my parents worked and my father had 2 or even 3 jobs at a time. Even with that, we still didn’t live in luxury, neither of my parents were drinkers or gamblers. Now imagine your father has died, or abandoned your mother. She is trying to make sure you don’t go hungry, keep you in school uniforms, pay for your books, trying to buy you the presents you want for your birthdays and Christmas so you won’t be disappointed, no support when she has to stay up all night looking after you when you are in pain and sick, then expected to go to some course (most of which treat people like imbeceles and ultimately do nothing to help ensure employment) and if she finally gets work, it’s more likely to be low paid, labour intense and quite probably zero hours contracts. So please think these things through. There may be a small minority who have managed to “play the system”, but that is no reason to tar everyone with the same brush. Nobody knows what is really going on behind closed doors. Are we going to be a nation of greed and “I’m alright Jack”, or will we be a nation that has compassion and empathy for our vulnerable and fight for social justice?
Well said.
I’m appalled at the amount of money benefit cheats costs this country each year. You can’t have it both ways. Hopefully the system will evolve to help people who are genuinely in need
Yeah, I hear there’s another vulture capitalist who genuinely needs to have a large debt written off. Done? Thanks Enda.
Social welfare fraud: costs between €20 and €30 million a year. Out of a Social Protection budget of around €20 billion pa. It’s chump change. We’re spending €27 million on a postcode system that nobody wants or needs – be appalled at that instead. Or debt write-offs in public banks, to the tune of billions a year. Seriously, get out yer pitchfork, there’s better outrage to be had, and you seem like the very man to lead it.
Hear hear James.
It’s too easy to appeal to empathy and take the moral high ground. The poverty industry have been doing this for decades tapping the state for ever more money till it bankrupted us after Berties bout of social conscience.
Your intellect is less developed than a malformed pig or other retarded common domestic animal
You grew up in a very nastily informed bubble
I find some of the comments here very disturbing to say the least . Whatever the circumstances or reasons for a person becoming a single parent the fact still remains that there are children who need to be looked after and provided for . The system has always been set up to penalise those who want to advance themselves in life , community welfare officers are a prime example , some people use this system to the best of their advantage but the majority of people will only use it in sheer desperation and if they are so desperate that they ask for this assistance cap in hand then they are often refused because they are working . Labeling single parents as scroungers is so wrong . I know plenty of 2 parent families on job seekers who dont work nor have they for as long as i remember , i also know single parents who dont work .However the obstacles that face a single parent who does work and wants to work are immense , these cuts are barbaric to those who want to give their children the best life possible and offer no incentive to those people , they limit their options and prospects . These cuts are designed to encourage people to work , but if you are they type of person who isn’t too fond of work in the first place then you certainly aren’t going to start now , especially when you discover how little extra you will get and the added obstacles that are in your way . Scroungers are scroungers no matter what way you look at it but targeting the non scroungers is totally wrong .
It always amazes me that someone who gets more money on a travel to work allowance can administer such cuts.
Governments the real welfare spongers.
would love to have the time to read this rant but unfortunately I am working !
Even Barack Obama gets a coffee break. Tool.
I have just read this again (the comments that follow the article are shocking). While some lone parent families are ‘deliberately’ created, not all are. Some find themselves widowed, deserted, victims of relationship abuse meted out to either themselves or their children, or the partner of someone in prison. In many cases lone parents become that because of the ELECTED ABSENCE of the other parent. Very few lone parents are such through choice, and very few celebrate that status. It is difficult enough raising a child alone, and not even a fool would willingly go down that path with the burden of impending poverty, and the associated social stigma that accompanies it to boot. Like the parent in this article, I have also encountered the thoughtless ‘single mother’ slurs – and those using the term telling me ‘we didn’t mean you, of course’. It still hurts. The landlord class,in the meantime, make a fat profit, on the extortionate rents we pay to keep the roof over our heads (not every single parent receives rent allowance, and even fewer now that new rules regarding rent ceilings have been imposed). For every lone parent raising their child, there is also an absent parent, who does not get labelled or have the same stigma imposed on them. These absent parents are the ones who should be sharing the brunt of these hardships. It takes two humans to create a child – the one who is doing the work, day in, day out, 24 / 7, 365 days a year should NOT be punished.