Poverty is corrosive to the human condition. At its very essence, it is about the basic provisions a person is asked to go without. Some 62,000 children in this country are living in consistent poverty. They go to bed hungry and there is no capacity to buy extra clothes, such as a warm coat for the winter, and there is absolutely no opportunity for them and their families to have a day out, go to the zoo or go to the cinema. I was struck by that fact today when the members of the National One Parent Family Alliance highlighted that for one-parent families the budget was the most regressive since 2012. It states nothing in it is targeted at one-parent families. It called it a short-sighted budget that will leave the poorest children in the State even poorer. That is a sad indictment. The €12 increase in core social welfare payments and a payment of an additional €2 for children will do nothing to mitigate poverty. I have a simple question: why was there nothing targeted at one-parent families in the budget? Other vulnerable groups were targeted. Why not one-parent families?

I thank the Deputy. This was a progressive budget. That is not just my opinion; the independent analysis by the Department of Finance shows that.

The kinds of measures in the budget that I think will be beneficial for one-parent families are the double payment of social welfare, the increase in the working-family payment, the double payment of child benefit, the increase in the dependant child allowance, the free schoolbooks and the reduction in the cost of childcare. All of these will benefit a lot of one-parent families.