Mr. John Bohan:

I thank the joint committee for the invitation to attend this meeting to discuss with my colleagues from other Departments the important issue of how best to address the State's efforts to tackle childhood poverty. I understand the joint committee first invited the relevant Departments with a role in children and youth affairs that are best placed to contribute to a cross-departmental strategy on childhood poverty and that it seeks an update on the work being done in this area by the relevant Departments.

I will first comment on the general role of the Department of Social Protection. According to its statement of strategy, the mission of the Department is to promote active participation in society. It does this mainly through providing a range of income support and other payments and through the provision of employment services such as job assistance, job search and other supports aimed at allowing persons to improve their living standards and life chances. The Department administers more than 70 separate schemes and services which impact on the lives of almost every citizen. Expenditure in 2013 is expected to be in the region of €20 billion. These payments play a key role in supporting those most in need, including children and their parents, persons who are unemployed or sick, carers, people with disabilities and older people. Specific roles provided by the Department include the development of social protection and social inclusion policy; promoting and supporting the incorporation of anti-poverty and social inclusion objectives in policy development; monitoring the implementation of these strategies; administration of a wide range of social insurance and social assistance schemes for children, persons of working age, carers, persons with disabilities and pensioners; and activation, employment and community services and programmes to promote development, progression, participation and social involvement of our clients.

These payments and functions set the context for considering the Department's specific role in tackling childhood poverty. The most obvious role is to pay benefits to families with children, with specific supports directed at such families. While the best known of these supports is the child benefit payment, there are also a number of other payments such as increases for qualified children to the main adult weekly payments, the family income supplement and the back to school clothing and footwear allowance. The Joint Committee on Education and Social Protection only yesterday held a meeting with the chair of the advisory group on tax and social welfare on the issue of payments to families with children. The meeting was held to discuss the group's recently published report on child and family income support payments.

An increasingly important role for the Department is the activation of parents and the provision of assistance to allow them to take up employment. While this is a long-standing objective of the social welfare system, the recent merger of the Department with the employment services of FÁS and the community welfare services of the Health Service Executive has had major implications for this role and the future potential of the Department in addressing parental and child poverty through employment and measures to improve parental employability. The Department also has a role in monitoring its national action for social inclusion, in particular the Government's target to reduce the number of people in poverty. Following a review by the Department last year, the Government set a new poverty target and announced its intention to introduce a specific sub-target for children to refocus efforts on this issue. Practical discussions on how to implement this decision are under way with interested stakeholders.

The Department does not work alone in this area and participates in a number of interdepartmental bodies, including the national children's strategy implementation group led by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. Through this work, it seeks to participate in a joined-up way in tackling issues of child poverty. The Department also represents Ireland on international bodies involved in social policy, notably the Social Protection Committee of the European Union, which played a major role in drafting the Council of Ministers conclusions on preventing and tackling child poverty and social inclusion and promoting children and well-being, which were published in October 2012. The Department is also co-ordinating the preparation of Council conclusions on the European Commission's recently published social investment package. One element of the package was the Commission recommendation in the area of investing in children. I will be pleased to elaborate on any of the issues I have outlined.