US embassy cable - 05DUBLIN1325

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 
------------------------------------- 
 
 
DUBLIN 00001325  002 OF 003 
 
 
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