Callous move will make life impossible

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.

If there is any sense of justice left in what passes for this Government’s conscience, it should immediately withdraw its heartless proposal to cut rent allowance supplements and welfare payments.

Even by the appalling standards of a regime that openly favours the rich while squeezing the poor, it is a callous move that will force thousands into emergency accommodation because the financial impact of such changes will make it impossible for them to meet rent costs.

Lone parents, who make up 47% of local authority housing lists, are particularly vulnerable. For them, the Scrooge policies coming from Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Coughlan will have dire repercussions.

She is defending the indefensible in justifying the cuts as a financial necessity. In other words, they are part of a cold and calculated cost-cutting exercise, with no thought given to the social fallout.

Are we to believe that nobody in her department warned Ms Coughlan of the harsh impact her draconian measures would have on the very people the scheme was originally designed to help? Clearly, if they spoke out, their doubts were swept aside.

It is fair to ask the minister if she paused to consider the simple question of where single parents would find money to pay for housing for at least six months until they qualify for an allowance, affording them some chance of living independently.

At present, there are 60,000 people on the social housing waiting list. And according to the national lone parents’ group OPEN (One Parent Exchange and

Network), Ms Coughlan’s mean-spirited measure will leave single parents with stark choices.

Some will have to move in with their own families, a highly sensitive and extremely difficult scenario at the best of times. Others will be forced to penny-pinch in order to pay for costly emergency bed and breakfast accommodation.

A more desperate alternative would see lone parents ending up on Ireland’s steadily growing list of homeless people, a frightening prospect that any single mother would be slow to contemplate.

The decision to withdraw the right of single parents to continue getting half the Family Payment for a year after starting to earn more than €293 a week will hit those who need it most.

There is a bitter irony in sacrificing those most in need of aid on the altar of fiscal rectitude while Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy dispenses taxpayers’ money to the golden circle of racing.

Hopefully, Ms Coughlan should have the political gumption to reverse her retrograde decision. If this Government has a soul, a notion many would challenge, it is in danger of losing it.