Deputy Séamus Healy:

I welcome our visitors and thank them for their presentations. Child poverty and support for children is a difficult area. I have some experience in this area, having been involved in youth organisations throughout my life. In more recent years, I was involved in a community child care facility, which we planned, built and currently operate in Clonmel. Incidentally, Barnardos also does excellent work in the town. While great work is being done in certain areas and is delivering good outcomes, we are working against the tide to some extent as it is unclear if or how the various areas or stages are being linked up. For this reason, excellent work in a particular sphere will benefit children who may, however, fall victim to some other difficulty at a later stage. I ask the witnesses to provide a picture, as it were, of what child services should look like. The requirement to poverty proof decision making and budgets must be addressed. If the provision of support for children is to be effective and successful, poverty proofing must be done on an ongoing basis. How do our visitors see the system as a whole working for the benefit of children?