PRESS RELEASE: Another Year, Another Give-Away Budget | October 2024
2 October 2024
— Ireland’s poorest children live in low-income, one-parent families but, yet again, they do not feature on the Government’s priority list —
One Family, Ireland’s national organisation for one-parent families, has said that it is disappointed that the Government again failed to keep its promise to tackle child poverty effectively in its 2025 Budget and has not taken basic measures to support working lone parents. The organisation is of the view that the Government again opted for short-termist, once-off payments instead of structural interventions backed up by solid long-term strategies.
One Family has welcomed a number of positive steps taken towards tackling high living costs through universal measures such as the education-related hot school meals and free books programmes. It also welcomed an increase to the Single Person Child Carer Credit, but said it needs to be available to both co-parents post separation. Most importantly, the once-off payments that are again a strong feature of this budget will no doubt help many struggling families, but they do not solve anything long term.
One Family noted that one of the fundamental societal problems of the present day – child and family homelessness – does not appear to have been addressed by any specific universal or targeted interventions even though the latest homelessness statistics from the Department of Housing show that 58% of all families in emergency accommodation are now one-parent families.
In the context of rampant real-terms inflation and volatile cost-of-living conditions, One Family believes that core welfare payments have not caught up with inflation, are now worth less in value than in 2020 and are overall grossly inadequate in alleviating deprivation in both welfare-dependent and working families.
For low-income families with children, the double Child Benefit payments and electricity credits will only cover the festive gifts and the Christmas lights; the Government will effectively sponsor a brief holiday from the reality of running a household on constantly eroded incomes. When the sugar rush and the spare cash will have finished in January 2025, many families will be returned to the brutal reality of trying to juggle bills with the ongoing costs the budget did not address on October 1st.
The Government opted to give two costly bonus Child Benefit payments over just two months in 2024 at a cost of €371m. This is in contrast to the €78.5m spent on the Child Support Payment – a type of targeted support for the poorest children and families – over the entire year in 2025.
In its Pre-Budget Submission 2025, One Family proposed raising the Child Support Payment (formerly known as Qualified Child Increase) by a minimum of €6 and €15, respectively. This is to restore the age differentiation levels and combat inflationary cuts. In Budget 2025, the Qualified Child Increase payment is now worth €4 more for under 12s and €8 for over 12s.
Carly Bailey, One Family Policy Manager, said:
“Like other organisations and most experts, we recommended improving core social welfare rates and the Child Support Payment, which directly reaches the children most in need. The evidence is clear on this, Child Benefit is very expensive and has very little impact on child poverty rates. Since targeting is repeatedly recommended by researchers, it is genuinely difficult to comprehend the rationale behind this, especially when it seems that money is no issue.”
One Family also noted there is no increase in income disregard levels for One-Parent Family and Jobseeker’s Transitional payments. This is the amount of money lone parents can earn before it impacts on their payment; One Family recommended this needed to be increased to at least €205 to reflect increases to the National Minimum Wage.
Karen Kiernan, One Family CEO, said:
“It is inexplicable to us that Minister Humphreys and this Government did not support lone parents to move into or stay in employment by increasing the income disregard in line with national minimum wage increases. This makes it more difficult for parents to work – what they earn now is worth 12.2 hours of minimum wage, compared to the equivalent 26 hours in the year 2000.
The Working Family Payment thresholds increased by €60 per family to align with the current national minimum wage – as is appropriate. However, this payment is not available to parents on Jobseeker’s Transitional Payment whose youngest child is over 7 years of age. We believe this should just be a normal part of adjustments to increases in the National Minimum Wage and we call on Government to rectify this oversight as soon as possible.”
One Family has stated that Budget 2025 is another failure by the latest Government to make significant progress towards ensuring everyone in Ireland can have adequate living wages or social supports: once-offs and temporary top-ups will not last long and are very costly. While these pre-Christmas, pre-election give-aways are popular with some voters, they do not go far enough towards lifting the most vulnerable parents and children out of long-term poverty. In a year of anticipated surpluses and unexpected windfalls, Budget 2025 fails to find new ways to solve perennial problems, having shown that, yet again, decision makers refuse to stray from applying political solutions to real-life problems.
QUOTES
Karen Kiernan, One Family CEO’s statement:
“We welcome some progressive Budget 2025 investments, such as the school meals programme, and the Government’s commitment to pilot holiday food provision – we know this is much needed, as One Family regularly provides struggling parents and children with weekly food vouchers. In the context of a lack of childcare, poorly paid part-time work and social welfare rates that unfortunately do not meet the real costs of today, most poor children living in consistent poverty in one-parent families are in dire need of such basic supports.”
Carly Bailey, One Family Policy Manager’s statement:
“Throughout the year, we made it very clear to Government, that if they are serious about their stated desire to end child poverty, targeted long-term supports must be provided to one-parent families – it is these families in particular that continue to experience some of the highest rates of child poverty and material deprivation in Ireland.”
“We call on all political parties who are serious about ending child poverty to commit to engaging with One Family ahead of the General Election to ensure that all families are supported to keep their heads above water.”
CONTACT
For more information on or to arrange an interview with a One Family spokesperson, please contact:
Diana Valentine
Press & Communications
comms@onefamily.ie
Mobile/WhatsApp: 0834470645
FOR EDITORS
One Family is Ireland’s national organisation for one-parent families and people sharing parenting or separating. It offers support, information and services to all members of all one-parent families, to those sharing parenting, to those experiencing an unplanned pregnancy and to professionals working with one-parent families.
Children are at the centre of One Family’s work and the organisation helps all the adults in their lives, including mums, dads, grandparents, stepparents, new partners and other siblings, offering a holistic model of specialist family support services. These services include a national helpline service, counselling and training courses for parents and professionals.
For further information, visit onefamily.ie.
