Dr. Tricia Keilthy:

I will answer Senator Wall's questions on food poverty and exceptional needs payments. I will then pass over to Ms Petrie, who will comment on the cost of a car and how that figure is calculated.

At the start of the pandemic, the issue of food poverty really came to the fore for many organisations and not just St. Vincent de Paul. That was especially the case when households were faced with the extra costs of having children home all day and the resulting extra demands on food budgets. Any increase in household expenditure on basics such as utilities and food has much greater impact on those on lower incomes because a much larger proportion of such incomes goes on those basics.

What we see is that food and the food budget is the one area of discretion people have over their weekly budget, and when times are tough that is what people cut back on. The rent and the utility bills are prioritised and families cut back on food. It is often the parents going without food so their kids can eat. The continuation of the school meals programme during the school closures was a vital form of support for many families. It was really important that that continued, including through the holidays because holiday hunger is a real issue as well. Moving forward, we need to start thinking of school meals as a core form of support for all children, provided in a universal way that is non-stigmatising. It is really important that the European Commission has recommended that all member states adopt an EU child guarantee which would guarantee all children from disadvantaged circumstances access to a hot school meal every day, free education, free childcare and free healthcare as well as access to adequate housing. That is a really important framework going forward and it relates back to Deputy Kerrane's question about what we can do about child poverty.

The exceptional needs payment and the level of support provided according to different needs need to be reviewed to ensure it is reflective of the actual costs and that people are not left with a gap between what the payment is and what the actual cost of their urgent or exceptional payment is. We would like to see that piece of work done. We need to ensure that the system still has discretion but that the levels of payment provided are reflective of the costs faced by households at the moment as well.

I will hand over to Ms Petrie, who will explain more about cars and the cost of rural transport.