No justification for one-parent-family payment cuts ... even on planet Joan

Mothers I know who work full-time and whose children are in primary school have full-time childminders, writes Victoria White

PLANET JOAN is named after the woman who discovered it, Joan Burton, and it has a different primary school system than we have in Ireland. Joanna Tuffy, chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection, is living on Planet Joan.

That is the only explanation for Tuffy’s attempt to justify the cuts of the one-parent-family payment, which will result in 30,000 to 40,000 lone parents being taken off the benefit on July 2, because their youngest child is seven. A child of seven, Tuffy said on radio show Morning Ireland last week, is “in school for a large part of the day”. A parent’s need for childcare is thus “very much changed from when your children are at pre-school age and you need full-time childcare.”