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The taxpayer last year funded Open University courses to the tune of €135,000 so that prison inmates could study the likes of creative writing, art, and even crime.

THIS month we made a big step towards abolishing the idea that children need care over the age of seven. On July 3 we did away with the notion that children over 16 need care if they were receiving a One Parent Family payment before April 27, 2011.

Joan Burton, the social protection minister, has rejected calls for the restoration of Christmas bonus payments for welfare recipients saying it was not possible as the Government needed to keep control of spending.

Doctors and nurses tasked with monitoring the health of terror suspects were complicit in abuses committed at prisons run by the Pentagon and the CIA, an independent report said.

Martina Evans draws on her Mallow childhood for her new work written in the unusual form of an extended prose poem, says Colette Sheridan

Saoirse Ronan has revealed it was a dream come true to take the starring role in the hotly anticipated new movie from the creator of the billion-euro Twilight franchise, Stephenie Meyer.

Lone parents are being attacked out of the blue and new social welfare rules which will see the one-parent family payment paid only up to the age of seven will be “opposed vehemently”, campaign groups say.

Under the new Social Welfare and Pensions Bill, lone parents will eventually only receive the one-parent family payment until their child is up to the maximum age of seven years old.

Struggling single parents will see their income slashed by €1,000 a year as financial supports are axed in the coming days.

ALISON MAXWELL

KEY figures in West Cork’s food industry are working with University College Cork (UCC) to develop Ireland’s first masters in organic horticulture on a renowned estate.

Social groups are today digesting the details of Budget 2011.

MEPs are to vote today to approve new measures tightening regulation on banks and financial institutions.

SOCIAL Affairs minister Mary Hanafin has claimed plans to cut vital financial support to 87,840 single parent families would be in the best interest of Ireland’s economic future.

MORE lone parents should be allowed access to the Rental Accommodation Scheme, while Fás needs to drop its “stupid” start times for courses, an Oireachtas committee heard yesterday.

SOCIAL Affairs Minister Mary Hanafin has said her colleague Brian Lenihan remains upbeat despite his cancer diagnosis, but she was scathing of the TV coverage of his illness.

SOCIAL Affairs Minister Mary Hanafin has said her colleague Brian Lenihan remains upbeat despite his cancer diagnosis, but she was scathing of the TV coverage of his illness.

NO matter how dire Ireland’s economic situation has become, taking money from children should always be a last resort, five groups representing parents and children insisted yesterday.

COMMUNITIES should play a greater role in designing and delivering healthcare services, the Combat Poverty Agency said yesterday.

IN her letter (May 15), Camille Loftus of the single-parent group OPEN refers to my letter of April 30 which she wrongly claims was “in relation to your report headlined ‘Crackdown denied as lone parent payments cut’” (April 14).

Iran has today released an Iranian-American democracy scholar after spending four months in prison - the third time in recent weeks Tehran has set free holders of dual-citizenship it accuses of trying to stir up a revolution.

Aer Lingus carried 852,000 passengers in June, an increase of just over 10% on the same month last year but the load factor or percentage of seats filled - fell back 1.2 points to 80.1%.

European companies would be allowed larger stakes in US airlines under a tentative agreement reached between the US and European Union.

THE Government wants to place limits on social welfare payments to lone parents who don’t seek work.

ALMOST half of households on local authority housing waiting lists throughout the country are headed by a lone parent.

The Government must urgently address a report that states cash-strapped lone parents are being forced into the clutches of moneylenders because they are having trouble opening bank accounts.

Evelyn Ring

Social and Family Affairs Minister Seamus Brennan has indicated that he is about to get tough with banks and other institutions that target lone parents with predatory money-lending practices.

A study commissioned by the One Parent Exchange Network (Open) has reportedly found that single parents are being targeted by money-lenders charging interest of up to 200%.

By Evelyn Ring

THE number of teenage mothers is no greater than it was 30 years ago, a campaign group for single parents said yesterday.

Scientists were celebrating today after capturing images of Saturn’s moon Titan, which were sent to Earth by the European Huygens spacecraft.

By Evelyn Ring

A spacecraft almost a billion miles from Earth has successfully made the closest encounter ever of Saturn’s mysterious smog-bound moon Titan, scientists revealed today.

THOUSANDS of lone parents are struggling to make ends meet and slipping into increasing levels of poverty, a study has found.

DISPLAYING all the insensitivity of an administration that casually lied as it squandered taxpayers’ money in the boom times, the Coalition is introducing policies which will make life impossible for thousands of vulnerable people.

LONE parent groups reacted angrily yesterday to proposals to cut the number of community employment places before the end of the year.