Lone parents forced to take up work by changes to the One Parent Family Payment actually suffered a fall in income, a new study shows. The report, from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), finds the changes, which were introduced by former Tánaiste Joan Burton in 2011, resulted in employed lone parents who had been in receipt of the payment losing 1.9 per cent of income while their non-employed counterparts saw no change. The drop in income by those who went into paid employment was due to the cost of childcare and the low wage, part-time jobs they were working.

About 99 per cent of recipients of the payment are mothers. In Ireland, in 2016, 17.6 per cent of children lived with a single parent – just above the OECD average of 17.1 per cent. The report also said that Ireland does stand out in terms of poverty and deprivation experienced by these lone parents. “Persistent poverty . . . was 26 percentage points higher among lone parents than for other adults compared to an average gap of between five and 20 points evident in other countries. This indicates that poverty among lone parents in Ireland appears more endemic and not solely due to transient shocks such as short-term loss of employment.”