Deadbeat journalism strikes again

Every couple of weeks or so, a newspaper runs a report about "deadbeat dads". Sometimes it's the Irish Examiner, occasionally the Irish Times (though it tends not to use the phrase), but usually it's the Irish Independent. The "facts" of this story are usually presented as follows: about 80,000 people, mostly women, are in receipt of the One-Parent Family Payment. In each case, the absent parent is required to pay towards the upkeep of the child. However, figures from the Department of Social and Family Affairs show that only a small percentage are doing so. Taxpayers are picking up the tab... Last week, it was again the turn of the Irish Independent. Senan Moloney's byline appeared over a story headed, "70,000 deadbeat dads dodge child support – Runaway fathers 'must be held to account'". No matter how often it is pointed out that this "story" is misleading, it continues to appear. Each time, some political luminary is quoted to breathe new life into an old lie. Last week it was the turn of Fine Gael TD Paul McGrath, who delivered himself of the opinion that there are "huge numbers of absent fathers who are not accepting their responsibilities". It might be time, he mused, to consider "more stringent approaches".

The idea that a man must hand over money on a regular basis to a woman he has impregnated harks back to a time when families depended solely on the income of one parent, usually the father. For the past two decades, however, the Irish State has been usurping the position of fathers by offering inducements to mothers to rear children alone. By asserting that the father is not involved with his children, a mother can obtain an array of benefits and allowances. To compete with the State, and have a chance of remaining officially part of his own family, a father needs to be on at least twice the average industrial wage. This context has utterly distorted the picture of single-parenthood, which journalists report on as though nothing has changed at all. To qualify for the one-parent family payment, the claimant must – theoretically – prove she is bringing up her child or children "without the support of the other parent". The majority of cases in which women claim the one-parent family payment, however, fall into one of the following categories: mothers who have decided to rear on their own a child or children without consulting the father about his preferences; mothers who receive under-the-table payments from fathers while claiming the One-Parent Family Payment; and mothers who continue to live with the fathers of their children while claiming the allowance. I know of no instance in which the Department of Social and Family Affairs has sought to ascertain whether the so-called "absent father" has really refused to support his child.

Any father who is prepared to marry the mother of his child, or to live with his family, and who has been refused the right to do this, cannot be deemed to have refused to support his children and has no further obligations to the mother, still less to the State. Any father who pays money under the table to the mother, or lives with her while she claims he has deserted his family, is helping her to defraud the State and contributing to the systematic demonisation of himself and other fathers.

The true dishonesty of the system can be perceived in its treatment of female deserters. Over a third of mothers claiming the One-Parent Family Payment are separated or divorced, many having deserted their husbands, who were given no option of continuing to support their children. In granting such women the One-Parent Family Payment, the authorities are breaking the law, because it is a principle of Benefits Law that deserters should not profit from their desertion. The Department, adding injury to illegality, goes on to demonise and pursue the deserted husband, designating him a "liable relative" and "maintenance debtor", when in truth he is the injured party whose children have been abducted.

All this is well known to the politicians and journalists who continue to beat this drum. In the final paragraphs of his report last week, Senan Moloney quoted the Social Affairs Minister Seamus Brennan announcing recently that he intends to replace the One-Parent Family Payment with a parental allowance for low-income families with young children. The purpose of this, according to Senan Moloney's report, is to abolish the cohabitation rule (which is at the root of much of the fraud in the present system), and "encourage the family units to stay together". The Department, the report goes on, "already suspects that many mothers claiming lone parent status are not lone parents at all".

And so, we perceive, the big "story" here is not "deadbeat dads", but "fraudster mums". To put things like that, however, would have required the Independent to risk "offending" some of the female readership it is currently trying to wrest back from the Irish Daily Mail, and perhaps also to unearth a politician willing to speak truthfully about matters of social importance.