THE VISIT OF HHS A/S WADE HORN: IRISH FAMILY

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 DUBLIN 001325

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: OVIP SOCI ECON EI
SUBJECT: THE VISIT OF HHS A/S WADE HORN: IRISH FAMILY
LIFE AND GOVERNMENT SOCIAL POLICY



1. Summary: During an October 12-15 visit to Dublin,
U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Assistant Secretary
for Family and Children, Dr. Wade Horn, had exchanges
with Irish officials, NGOs, and journalists on the place
of family life in U.S. and Irish social policies. A/S
Horn highlighted Bush Administration initiatives
supporting marriage and parenthood, a strategy grounded
in sociological research on the importance of families
for children. Irish officials noted Government steps to
introduce relationship education in schools and to update
Irish law to account for evolving family mores. Irish
officials also expressed interest in U.S. models to
provide lone parents in difficult circumstances with
incentives to pursue work and the possibility of
marriage. During his participation in A/S Horn's
schedule, the Ambassador noted that relationships created
by HHS constituted an important dimension of overall U.S.-
Irish relations. He also credited HHS leadership for
establishing joint medical research programs that
benefited both sides. With child care issues looming
large in the run-up to the 2007 general elections in
Ireland, Post sees value in continued HHS input on child
and family policies. End summary.


2. On October 12-15, Dr. Wade Horn, Assistant Secretary
for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS),and HHS Advisor Pedro
Moreno visited Ireland to exchange views on social
policies and family issues. A/S Horn met with Education
Minister Mary Hanafin, Minister of State for Children
Brian Lenihan, and officials in the Department of Social
and Family Affairs. He also visited several NGOs that
work with the Government to provide marriage/family
counseling services. A/S Horn's media outreach included
an address at Trinity College, interviews with press and
radio reporters, and a "faith-based roundtable" of
journalists representing several denominational
newspapers.

A/S Horn's Message: The Importance of Family
--------------


3. In his meetings and public outreach, A/S Horn
highlighted the Bush Administration's support for
families, expressed through a mix of tax policies and new
federal initiatives. This strategy, he said, was
grounded in sociological research showing that children
in married households performed strongly across a range
of health and behavioral indicators. The Administration
had thus launched the Healthy Marriage Initiative, an
educational service that provided couples with tools to
address inter-personal conflicts. The Administration
also aimed through tax benefits to give households the
latitude to have one or both spouses in the workplace.
A/S Horn contrasted this approach with stated EU policies
obliging women to enter the workforce as part of a
strategy to support increasingly burdened welfare systems
in depopulating Member States. He emphasized, however,
that the Administration was also working to support
households of varying make-ups, such as with the
Fatherhood Initiative, which aimed to promote responsible
parenthood particularly for lone-parent families.

Education Minister: Schools and the Family
--------------


4. Education and Science Minister Mary Hanafin noted
that relationship education was an integral feature of
overall social/health education in Irish primary and
secondary (high) schools. She explained that teachers
were trained to discuss with their students the
characteristics of healthy relationships, ranging from
friendship to marriage; teams of psychologists also
toured schools to reinforce these efforts. Moreover, the
Irish Government had in recent years pressed for more
parental involvement in such programs, which was part of
an overall push to make schools a center of community
life. Minister Hanafin said that relationship education
was bearing success, for example, in helping to redress
the root causes of student bullying. A/S Horn and
Minister Hanafin also conferred on the controversy of
using the word "marriage" in Government-sanctioned
settings, with A/S Horn noting that Bush Administration
programs had endeavored to re-legitimize reference to
marriage in public discourse.

Secular Trends and Lone-Parent Issues
--------------


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5. Minister of State for Children Brian Lenihan (who is
one rung below Cabinet-level) cited his participation in
a Parliamentary committee that is considering possible
updates to Ireland's 1937 constitution to account for
changes in social/family mores. The constitution, he
observed, had shaped Irish law in accordance with
Catholic morality, a reflection of the Church's influence
and the centrality of family life at the time. The
Parliament was now considering ways to reflect in the
constitution the more recent secularization of society,
encompassing the non-traditional shapes of contemporary
families. Minister Lenihan noted the potentially
divisive nature of this exercise, particularly in light
of the 1995 constitutional referendum that overturned a
divorce ban by a 50.75 percent to 49.25 percent margin.
He elaborated that the Parliamentary committee was
wrestling with whether and how to give legal recognition
to various forms of adult unions, but in a way that would
not undermine traditional marriage.


6. Minster Lenihan also expressed interest in U.S.
Government incentives for single parents in difficult
circumstances to pursue work and the possibility of
marriage. A/S Horn observed that the USG had only in
recent years reversed longstanding welfare policies that
discouraged lone parents from work and marriage. The
newer U.S. approach featured the availability of child
care for single parents wishing to work, as well as the
financial advantages of having a working spouse.
Minister Lenihan noted that Ireland's 80,000 lone parents
had access to a mix of child benefits and single-
parent/low-income supplements that that serve as
disincentives to marriage. Ireland, however, had had
more recent success on the work front, with requirements
that benefit recipients work a certain number of hours a
week, depending on their children's ages. Ireland had
also capped at seven years the amount of time that a
person could remain on the dole.

Population Trends in Europe and America
--------------


7. At a Trinity College forum, A/S Horn and Irish
sociologist Tony Fahey exchanged views on de-population
trends in Europe. Fahey pointed out the paradox that
continental Member States with more generous family
welfare regimes had low birth rates (with an EU average
of 1.4 children per family),while the United States and
Ireland, with no active pro-birth policies, boasted high
birth rates (with 2.2 and 1.9 children per family,
respectively). The EU statistics, he said, showed the
difficulty of engineering social outcomes through
government policies, and A/S Horn noted that culture
trumped government in determining such outcomes. Fahey
added that it would be convenient to attribute the high
Irish birth rate to Catholic influences, except that
Mediterranean countries with similar influences, such as
Italy, had recently registered the world's lowest birth
rates. He argued that a more likely explanation related
to the return of Irish migr families and an immigration
influx during Ireland's "Celtic Tiger" economic period,
as well as the lag effect of a trend that emerged in the
1990s for Irish women to marry and have children later in
life.

The Ambassador: The Value of HHS Diplomacy
y
--------------


8. The Ambassador, who took part in A/S Horn's meetings
with GOI officials, noted during the visit that the
relationships established by HHS in recent years
constituted an important, and previously untapped,
dimension of overall U.S.-Irish relations. He observed
that HHS leadership had set a new standard for health
diplomacy by initiating bilateral programs that continued
to benefit both sides. The Ambassador highlighted as an
example the U.S.-Ireland R&D Partnership, which provides
for exchanges among U.S., Republic of Ireland, and
Northern Ireland health officials and researchers in
several medical fields. He also explained that the
social/family issues addressed by A/S Horn, particularly
child care, had moved atop the political agenda ahead of
Ireland's 2007 general elections, making HHS input on the
subject even more valuable. The Ambassador added that
the planned November 7-9 visit of HHS Deputy Secretary
Alex Azar would be another opportunity to build upon
these successful links.


DUBLIN 00001325 003 OF 003


Comment: A Political Focus on Child Care
--------------


9. Further to the Ambassador's comments, Post's
conversations with Irish political parties have borne out
that child care will be among the central campaign issues
for the 2007 elections. Slightly more than half the
adult female population is now in the workforce, a
stunning statistic for a country whose social mores left
most women in the household a generation ago. This
change, combined with increasingly expensive day care
fees, has pushed the child care issue to the forefront of
working families' concerns. Opposition parties have
already begun to float generous child/family benefit
schemes, with the Labour Party, for example, proposing on
October 20 that paid maternity leave be extended to one
year. The governing party, Fianna Fail, is likely to
counter these proposals with its own package of child
benefits/tax credits in the 2006 Government budget, to be
announced in December. In this political context, Post
sees value in the possibility of continued exchanges with
HHS on family and children's issues.


10. HHS cleared this cable.
KENNY