Ms Catherine Joyce:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak. In responding to the question about the cost of the referendum in terms of child care, tomorrow is an historic opportunity to put children at the heart of the Constitution. Whatever the outcome, there remains a responsibility to follow up on the substantial progress made on child protection in recent years. I refer in particular to the child and family support agency. If the referendum is passed by next week, the child and family support agency should be aware that implementation of the implications of the referendum will come to pass. The agency will be responsible for addressing the weighting towards early intervention and prevention services and family support services, for which we have been calling for a long time. We are fully in favour of this. Whatever happens with the referendum, the core issue in budget 2013 is that the child and family support agency be sufficiently resourced. The agency has a major role to play in improving the child protection system and in holistically approaching interventions in child poverty and mitigating the impact of child poverty by breaking down the intergenerational cycle of poverty entrenched in many communities. In bringing together those solutions to poverty, in terms of services in education, health and child welfare, the agency needs to be sufficiently resourced to do the work as well as its work in child protection at the crisis end of the scale. Resourcing of the child and family support agency is what we want to take from the referendum.