One Family responds to Budget 2027

For immediate release – Tuesday 7th October 2026 

One Family says of the €7 billion+ in new spending in Budget 2027, very little will get to the families who need it most. While there are some, limited actions that will impact some one-parent families, such as the weekly increase in Fuel Allowance, many of today’s announcements won’t even keep up with inflation for children and their parents living in poverty.  
 

• Repeated failure to sufficiently increase income disregards for the Jobseekers Transitional Payment and One Parent Family prevents lone parents from being able to afford to get into employment. This is made worse by increases in the national minimum wage, effectively meaning this is a stealth cut. Since 2000, there has been over a 55% reduction in the amount of income lone parents can earn before these payments are impacted – embedding barriers to employment, not removing them. 

• Increases in core social protection payments, child support payment and weekly threshold increase for Working Family Payment aren’t enough to address the disproportionate poverty experienced by one-parent families, these increases only maintain current poverty levels.

• Reduction in childcare costs won’t even take affect for 11 months and while it’s welcome the income threshold has increased from €34,000 so that more families can avail of free childcare, the measures fail to deliver what one-parent families need: a public system of childcare.

• Fuel Allowance increase is welcome, but given uncertainty about energy prices over coming months it may not be enough to protect. 

Karen Kiernan, CEO, One Family said: 

“Simon Harris said in his speech that work must pay, but this approach doesn’t seem to extend to lone parents. Without increases in the income disregards for One Parent Family Payment and Jobseekers Transitional Payment, Government are ensuring that work cannot pay for lone parents, maintaining disproportionately high child poverty rates in one-parent families. 

“As today’s OECD report shows, implementing policies that support parents to work is the best way to support families out of poverty. But there’s nothing in Budget 2027 to achieve this, and the targeted measures to protect families from poverty and deprivation are insufficient. In the last 12 months, poverty has increased for one-parent families and looking at today’s Budget announcements, this will continue to rise over the next 12 months. The reality is, today’s announcements will fail to prevent increases in child poverty, never mind action the Government’s ambition to reduce it to 3% by 2030.” 

Aolish Gormley, Policy & Advocacy Co Ordinator, One Family said: 
“It’s extremely disappointing that there was no announcement of an increase in HAP or RAS, or announcement of investment in anti-homelessness measures, such as expansion of the tenant-in-situ scheme. The housing crisis is driving poverty, particularly for one-parent families and there’s nothing in today’s Budget announcements which acknowledges or addresses this.” 
 

[ENDS] 

For more information, please contact Vicky Masterson, One Family Communications Manager on 083 447 0645 / vmasterson@onefamily.ie  

Notes to Editor: 
 

1. One Family is Ireland’s organisation for people parenting alone, sharing parenting, and separating. We have been working with one-parent families for over 50 years. We provide a range of direct services to parents and children, along with campaigning and advocating for legislative and social change to deliver true equality for all families. Services include direct family support, parenting courses, New Futures employability programme, AskOneFamily helpline and counselling for those experiencing an unplanned or crisis pregnancy. You can learn more about One Family at www.onefamily.ie