Lone parent support must be tackled, says top academic

THE academic who came under fire over his comments about lone parents, last night reiterated his belief that our society needs to look at social welfare systems which encourage single-parent families.

In a public lecture at UCC, Dr Edward Walsh, University of Limerick president emeritus, argued that society was facing difficulties due to the erosion of the traditional family structure.

He said the State is providing very real financial incentives which are actively encouraging the emergence of lone parent families.

“The support the State provides may have moved further than it should. Very real financial incentives are now in place that may actively encourage the formation of lone-parent families,” he said.

Dr Walsh, in the wake of a recent backlash from the lone parent lobby, stressed that he was merely presenting the statistics and it was up to each individual to make what they would of the data.

He also apologised if some of the terminology he used caused offence in certain quarters, but he said: “These are the terms used in the reports to which I refer.”

Quoting studies conducted in the US, he said it had been found that 72% of men accused of murder had come from families where the biological father was absent. Furthermore, the same applied to 60% of males accused of rape.

Dr Walsh’s lecture, entitled Science and Technology and the Future of Ireland, addressed the economic growth of the country in modern times. Dr Walsh, chairman of the Irish Council for Science and Technology, said “national happiness” was a factor which should be considered.

Ireland’s GDP was all very well “but we need other things as well. For instance, how do we make this country a good place in which to live?” he said.

Quality of life needed to be equated along with GDP in order to achieve what he termed national happiness.

But quality of life in Ireland was being adversely affected, not only by the rapid acceleration of lone parent families, but also drink and drug abuse.

Ireland was long recognised as having a drink culture, but now binge drinking is reaching epidemic proportions amongst teenagers, he said.

Drug abuse and STDs were also on the increase, he said.

“We do not have a rich or strong moral framework from which to operate,” he said, referring to recent church, judicial and political controversies, but we had to accept that Irish society had problems and the time had come to address the causes of those problems.