Responding to our series on the new family, Ronnie O'Toole proposes the introduction of an alternative system to support lone parents and their children.
A little-heralded milestone in Irish social-welfare history passed this year. The lone-parents allowance - which emerged from the 1972 Report of the Commission on the Status of Women - is 30 years old.
The measure to introduce lone-parents allowance was announced in Richie Ryan's 1973 budget, with full implementation coming in 1974.
What is surprising about the Status of Women report was how little discussion space was devoted to this measure. In the report there was only one paragraph on lone parents, while the 1973 budget speech which gave it effect only devoted two sentences.
The reason was simple: the proposed allowance was fairly cheap - there were only 3,000 lone parents at the time, and such expenditure in terms of the overall budget merited little attention.
It didn't stay at 3,000 for long. By the early 1980s it had almost doubled, reaching 5,267, though that was mild compared to what was to come. Over the course of the 1980s the numbers seeking lone-parents allowance increased almost fivefold. By 2003 this had more than tripled again, leaving the number of lone parents just short of 80,000.
The number of lone parents would have fit around a school football pitch in 1974 - today they would fill Croke Park.
One of the main reasons for this is because of the unintended impact of the measure itself - during a time when the national fertility rate plummeted, the fertility of young women from a relatively limited number of deprived areas surged.
The greater job opportunities and increasing access to artificial contraception, which reduced the childbearing rate for most Irish women, was not having the same effect for this very narrow group of underprivileged women. Why?
To young women's great detriment, lone-parents allowance was distorting their choices. Well-intentioned policy had warped the short-term prospects of a narrow stratum of society, offering them a fast-track to an income and housing, on condition that they got pregnant without the support of a partner.
The benefits seem generous from the perspective of a 16-year-old wanting to prove her maturity to her peers. From the perspective of that same woman four years later, it is anything but.
Once she is landed with a child, poverty grabs a hold of her, and rarely lets go. As Frances Byrne pointed out in her article (December 20th), lone-parents households have the highest rate of consistent poverty among all social welfare recipients, making up 43 per cent of housing lists across the State.
Another insidious result of lone-parents allowance is that it creates a barrier to lone parents' establishing long-term relationships, as financially this would impose a huge penalty on them. A recent study by John Haskey in the UK estimated that this affects 25 per cent of lone parents. If this figure is to translate for the Republic, approximately 30,000 children do not have their father or other male role model in their lives, simply because the State will punish their mother with harsh financial penalties if she should ever get a long-term partner.
Bereft of ideas, the only policy direction that the political parties can seem to agree on is that the way to tackle the problem is getting lone parents back into the workplace.
This can involve allowing lone parents to keep more benefits even after entering the workforce, or funding crèche facilities to allow them to work.
This is a non-solution. Think of the difficulties that a married couple has in maintaining two jobs while rearing a family.
Yet the major thrust of public policy today is to assume that, on their own, lone parents are better positioned to hold down a job and raise a child on their own, when married couples find it so difficult.
In any case, many lone parents, having already missed out on a full education, have already lost out on any significant career prospects.
Further, the problem of being a lone parent is that raising a child is a two-person job, requiring 24 hours a day vigilance and care.
Having a child without the support of a partner dramatically reduces the lone parent's ability to function outside work, such as having time to shop, relax and socialize. Having a job is an additional burden for some lone parents, perhaps an opportunity for others, but a solution for neither.
What should be done? Any solution must try to remove the perverse and unintended impact of lone-parents allowance, while ensuring that current recipients are not left destitute.
The reforms suggested below are not about saving money - in fact they would more than likely be a lot more expensive than the current system.
Firstly, the lone-parents allowance scheme should be closed for all new entrants.
All existing lone parents should be told that their social welfare benefits are guaranteed until their children reach 18, regardless of what living arrangements they organise for themselves.
This will remove the perverse disincentive that stops a quarter of all lone parents establishing long-term relationships.
Secondly, the State's resources should be siphoned back to the communities that account for the greatest number of single parents in another form, ideally in as far as possible to the same families.
For example, in specified areas, all school-going children over the age of 15 should be given a monthly subsistence.
Alternatively, children's allowance should be increased dramatically and taxed, as a means of greatly helping the targeting of assistance.
What is not an option is to continue a policy that has helped create - and perpetuate - some of the most despairing poverty in our society, while in so doing isolating children from their fathers.
Well-intentioned but ultimately disastrous policy mistakes cannot be part of our conception of a just society.
Dr Ronnie O'Toole is Social and Statistical Inquiry Society of Ireland's Barrington lecturer in economics 2004/'05.