Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It would cost serious money - tens of millions. It is not small beans. It would cost tens of millions to ensure that everybody who stays in school until their leaving certificate regardless of their age got a children's allowance payment. It would increase that expenditure by tens of millions. Deputy Bríd Smith rightly pointed that out that if my children were 18 and still in school, I should not get that extension. The Deputy asked me whether we could find a way of means testing for the most vulnerable families who need that money.

The means-tested payment is the qualified child payment that is made on a weekly basis to those who have no income other than what they get in State supports or their part-time jobs, whether they receive the working family payment or not. That is the way we as a State target the funding that we have to ensure those families who need it most get it, not by extending a universal payment to those who might not need it just for the sake of keeping the universality of the payment. That is only my opinion. That is just the way I feel. I think we have too many children living in consistent poverty.

When I look disappointedly - this is probably my own naivete - at the changes we made to last year's budgets which I know were only tiny, they only had an impact of bringing 0.3% of the children who were living in poverty out of poverty. That tells me that we need billions of euros in direct transfers to bring the other 8.2% of children who are living in consistent poverty out of poverty. The State's money is not best spent by giving it to those who do not necessarily need it. We should support in a targeted fashion those who do need it. That is why I would disagree with increasing the universal payment for everybody in school.