The Government is planning to introduce welfare changes that could end up moving thousands of lone parents from welfare to work by making it obligatory for them to seek employment or training.
The revamped plans involve allocating individual lone parents a trained welfare adviser from the Department of Social and Family Affairs to help them access support for employment, education or training.
Lone parents would be required to liaise with a welfare adviser once their youngest child reached the age of seven or eight, although this detail has yet to be finalised.
The changes are being piloted in rural parts of Co Kilkenny and the Coolock area of Dublin. They are aimed at identifying practical and administrative issues that may arise in advance of the scheme being introduced nationally.
More than 80,000 lone parents are reliant on social welfare as their main source of income. Figures show that children in these families are at much higher risk of poverty than the rest of the population.
Minister for Social and Family Affairs Martin Cullen said he hoped the changes could be introduced in the next budget, although it could take several years to be fully introduced.
He said it was clear that the current welfare system for lone parents was flawed and that one-to- one support for single parents could achieve much better results for families.
"The best way to deal with this is to deal with lone parents on a case-by-case basis, to examine their individual needs, whether that is childcare, issues to do with literacy or education, before getting them into different schemes or part-time work," he told The Irish Times.
Although tackling poverty is the main aim behind the planned changes, Government officials are understood to be alarmed at the cost of the lone parents' allowance, now known as the one-parent family payment.
The State pays about €830 million a year on the allowance now,compared with just over €300 million in 1997. It pays a further €200 million in supports, such as rent allowance, to single-parent families.
The planned welfare changes involve replacing the lone parents' allowance with a parental allowance, aimed at low-income families with children.
Once the youngest child reaches a certain age, the parent would be forced to move from parental allowance on to unemployment benefit, or what is now known as the jobseekers' allowance. From this point on, the parent would receive one- to-one support in accessing education, employment or childcare.
Lone-parent groups have broadly welcomed the changes, which they say could help improve living standards for single-parent families. But they have cautioned that support for education, training and childcare will need to be flexible and meaningful.
Frances Byrne of the single parent group Open said: "We're delighted to see these pilot projects up and running. But significant challenges remain in areas such as poverty traps, and areas outside the control of the department, such as access to childcare."
One Family, which provides support services for single-parent families, said the obstacles in accessing quality education and employment needed to be addressed.
"It is vital that the State supports parents in ways which can help them overcome obstacles rather than perpetuate existing problems," the group said, in a statement.
It has also urged that the reformed welfare scheme be rolled out on a voluntary rather than a mandatory basis.