Long-term welfare dependency is not in the best interests of the lone parent, their children or society, Minister for Social Affairs Seamus Brennan said today.
According to the Minister, supports currently provided to lone parents are passive in nature, and he called for incentives to assist a person to take up education, training or employment opportunities.
"The reforms I am working towards are to tackle obstacles and to replace them with incentives and activation measures designed to people's needs and abilities," he said.
Mr Brennan was speaking at a forum in Dublin today following the publication of a Government report, Proposals for supporting lone parents.
One of the proposals in the report was to provide income support at a level sufficient to enable full participation in society and to end the cohabitation rule by making it neutral in terms of influencing people's choices regarding their living arrangements.
Mr Brennan called the report the most "comprehensive review of the welfare of lone parents undertaken for several years" and said it has a "valuable input" to make in the final shaping of reforms that are "necessary and urgent".
"The reforms are about introducing more enlightened social policies that directly target and benefit the lives of tens of thousands of people, especially children, who are for the most part caught in restrictive poverty traps," Mr Brennan said.
There are currently around 80,000 lone parents - almost 98 per cent of them women - in receipt of One Parent Family Payments, at a cost of €770 million last year.
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