One Family briefs TDs on crises impacting one-parent families and urge them to “Get It Right”

26th March 2026

One Family will brief TDs and policymakers in the AV Room at Leinster House today about critical issues impacting one-parent families across Ireland. Urgent political action is needed on issues including family law reform, child poverty, family homelessness and access to education for one-parent families across Ireland.

Event speakers include:

• Professor Katriona O’Sullivan, author of Poor
• Naomi Connolly, Parent from One Family Advocacy Project
• Joyce, New Futures Employability Programme Participant
• Karen Kiernan, CEO One Family
• Sinéad Gibney, Social Democrats TD and Lone Parent

TDs will be given a policy brief outlining critical issues in these areas and actions they can take, including:

• Prevent family homelessness by increasing housing assistance payments in line with market rents and increasing funding for tenant-in-situ scheme.
• Include one-parent families as a named group in government’s new Child & Family Homelessness Action Plan.

• Extend Jobseekers Transitional Payment for lone parents until their youngest child is 18.
• Invest in out-of-court supports such as parenting courses, counselling and mediation to help families reach child-centred agreements and avoid family court where possible.
• Fund specialised services nationwide that support families experiencing high levels of conflict or domestic violence, such as One Family’s Separating Well for Children service.
• Move from a “work-activation” government approach for lone parents on social protection to an evidence-based “education-first” one. This would address high levels of in-work poverty and create long-term savings for government, along with financial security for families.

Professor Katriona O’Sullivan, Author of “Poor” said:
For far too long we have let the most vulnerable carry the brunt of the unequal distribution of wealth. Now is the time for this to stop. Now is the time for us to do better. We are a rich country; our GDP is one of the highest in the EU- yet the rate of children at risk of poverty is growing year on year; and the distance between the rich and the poor is expanding. Lone parent families are the most affected by poverty. They are the ones being left behind in terms of access to education and high status employment. As someone who benefited from excellent policies which were in place in the late 90’s I know first hand how important it is to support people out of the poverty trap. I know first hand how wonderful it is to be cared for by state policies, to be given the opportunity to achieve great things. One Family’s Get It Right campaign offers a clear blueprint on how to address these issues. We know how to solve these issues- the question is are we brave enough, do we care enough. We need the political will and courage of convictions from our elected representatives to action the steps being proposed by the Get It Right campaign.”

Naomi Connolly, Lone Parent, One Family Advocacy Project said:
“For many people fleeing abuse, the lack of available properties means that even with supports like Domestic Violence HAP, there is simply nowhere to go. Survivors are faced with an impossible choice: accept placement in homeless accommodation, which can be unsafe and unsuitable for children, or return to the family home and risk further abuse. This stark reality forces victims to weigh the fear and instability of homelessness against the dangers of remaining in a violent environment, highlighting the urgent need for genuine, accessible housing solutions for those escaping domestic violence.”

Karen Kiernan, CEO of One Family said:
“One-parent families across Ireland are being impacted by multiple, interconnected criseis. As the recent SILC data shows, enforced deprivation and consistent poverty rose for one-parent families in 2025, even with cost-of-living measures in place and these have now disappeared. 48.7% of children in one-parent families are living in deprivation and 58% of homeless families are one-parent families; this is a shocking statistic which should be prompting urgent political action. But there are solutions and we welcome the opportunity to brief TDs and policymakers on the evidence-based actions they can take to address, not only poverty, but family homelessness, family law and access to education.”

Sinéad Gibney, TD said:
“I raised my daughter as a single mum. One-parent families are a huge part of Irish society, but they’re often pushed out to the margins. Right now, we have too many lone parents and their children living in poverty, in homelessness, made vulnerable by a system that isn’t built for them. This is a chance to look at how we can create an Ireland where all families are cherished equally, where one-parent families are supported and celebrated.”

You can learn more about One Family’s Get It Right campaign by watching the campaign video.

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

Notes to Editor:

• 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.
• One Family was hosted in the AV Briefing Room by Sinéad Gibney, TD, Social Democrats.

21st March 2026 

To mark International Single Parents Day, One Family have launched their #GetItRight campaign, calling for urgent government action on family law, child poverty, family homelessness and access to education for one-parent families across Ireland.  

If Government gets services, policies and legislation right for one-parent families, then they will be right for all families in Ireland. 

We’re calling on government to: 

Invest in out-of-court supports: Not only would this address lengthy court waiting times, but it would also provide best outcomes for children. Families need support, parenting courses, mediation and counselling to avoid adversarial, traumatic court cases. This should include funding for specialised services that support families experiencing high levels of conflict or domestic violence, such as One Family’s Separating Well for Children service, and therapeutic services for children.   

Target Child Poverty: Most poor children in Ireland live in one-parent families and lone parents experience high levels of in-work poverty. If the government wants to reduce child poverty, they can do this by targeting one-parent families. An efficient way of doing this is by increasing the amount of income excluded for lone parents who receive One Parent Family Payment or Jobseekers Transitional Payment to €222.75 per week; the equivalent of 16 working hours at National Minimum Wage.  

Stop Family Homelessness: Government cannot accept monthly increases in child and family homelessness as normal. They need to immediately fund homelessness prevention, including the tenant-in-situ scheme, and increase housing assistance payments in line with local market rents. These payments were last increased in 2022 and the gap between the payment and rent that parents are forced to bridge is fuelling poverty, deprivation and increasing family homelessness. 

Improve Access to Education: Move from a “work-activation” government approach to lone parents on social welfare to an evidence-based “education-first” one. This would address high levels of in-work poverty and create long-term savings for government, along with financial security for families.   

Karen Kiernan, CEO of One Family said: 

“We have achieved huge, positive changes for one-parent families in Ireland since our organisation was founded 54 years ago and that is to be welcomed and acknowledged. But we’ve moved from putting lone parents in institutions to placing them in systems which harm them. This includes a family law system which doesn’t deliver a child-centred approach, a housing crisis which has created epidemic levels of family homelessness in one-parent families and a “work-activation” approach to lone parents and employment, which fuels high levels of in-work poverty.  

Throughout 2026, our #GetItRight campaign will highlight these issues and our solutions to solving them. These are fixable issues, but we need action from our government and commitment to positive change. We look forward to political engagement on these critical issues for one-parent families.” 

You can watch the campaign video on One Family’s website now.  

[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  

Press Release

One Family Responds to Media Reports

of Social Welfare Fraud and

Notion of the ‘Undeserving Lone Parent’

(Dublin, Wednesday 9 October 2013) One Family, Ireland’s leading organisation for one-parent families, responds to recent reports of social welfare fraud and the targeting of claimants of one-parent family benefits by Department of Social Protection investigators.

Karen Kiernan, CEO of One Family, states: “We find it abhorrent that there are some two-parent families masquerading as lone parents in order to receive more social welfare than they are entitled to. Whilst the social welfare system needs an overhaul to ensure that resources are put most where they are needed, i.e. with poor children in poor families, fraud is not the answer as it hurts lone parents and their children, and others reliant on state support.”

Stuart Duffin, One Family’s Director of Policy, comments:  “The dismantling and restructuring of social protection programmes have impacted disproportionately on women, especially lone parents, and shifted public discourse and images to welfare as fraud, thereby linking poverty, welfare and crime. Consequently, genuine lone parents can be demonised as welfare cheats. This almost criminalisation of poverty raises questions related to regulation, control, and the relationship between them, and it would behove the government to be extremely careful about their representation of fraud.”

There are three possible causes of irregular payments in the welfare system, fraud (dishonest intent), customer and/or third-party error and departmental error. An analysis by One Family which is available on www.onefamily.ie, has found that ‘Control Savings’– the internal performance indicator on the effectiveness of the Department of Social Protection’s (DSP) control measures, which has become a publicly quoted figure when the DSP wishes to report its efforts to reduce suspected fraud and error – is a poorly generated estimate. There is enough evidence to be concerned that the Department’s guidelines are not applied consistently across regions and that the predetermined multipliers used to generate estimated future savings do not accurately reflect return rates to welfare schemes.

According to an audit carried out by the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG), fraud and error in the Irish welfare system was estimated to be between 2.4% and 4.4% in 2010 (C&AG, 2011).  This would seem to place it in a comparable position with the UK (2.7%), New Zealand (2.7%) and Canada (3-5%).

Ms Kiernan concluded: “It is time the media and policy makers stop perpetuating notions of the deserving and undeserving poor. Social welfare and other state supports should be based on evidence of need and from a perspective of equality and fairness, not from who is politically expedient to target.”

Notes for Editors:

• 1 in 4 families with children in Ireland is a one-parent family
• Over half a million people live in one-parent families in Ireland
• Almost 1 in 5 children (18.3%) live in a one-parent family (Census 2011)
• There are over 215,000 one-parent families in Ireland today (25.8% of all families with children; Census 2011)
• 87,586 of those are currently receiving the One-Parent Family Payment
• Those living in lone parent households continue to experience the highest rates of deprivation with almost 56% of individuals from these households experiencing one or more forms of deprivation (EU-SILC 2011)
• The document ‘One Family Analysis: DSP Control Savings Research’ is available to read and download here.

About One Family

One Family was founded in 1972 and is Ireland’s leading organisation for one-parent families offering support, information and services to all members of all one-parent families, to those experiencing an unplanned pregnancy and to those 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, step-parents, new partners and other siblings, offering a holistic model of specialist family support services. These services include the lo-call askonefamily national helpline on 1890 622 212, counselling, and provision of training courses for parents and for professionals. One Family also promotes Family Day, an annual celebration of the diversity of families in Ireland today, with 10,000 people attending events this year on 19 May (www.familyday.ie). For further information, visit www.onefamily.ie.

Available for Interview

Karen Kiernan, CEO | t: 01 662 9212 or 086 850 9191

Stuart Duffin, Director of Policy & Programmes | t: 01 662 9212 or 087 062 2023

Further Information/Scheduling

Shirley Chance, Director of Communications | t: 01 662 9212 or 087 414 8511