Dr. Tricia Keilthy:

I thank Senator Murphy. I fully agree we need to have a broad definition of what poverty means in Ireland. As for the work in the community that SVP does, many of the people who request our help can often point to a single event that led to their current situation which has pushed them into poverty, whether it is the death of a family member, the birth of a child with additional needs, becoming unemployed unexpectedly or a family separation.

There are exceptional circumstances. Every person is unique and has his or her own experience. We really need to reflect that and the lived experience of people and how we talk and define poverty in national policy, as well as in the budgetary process. That is really important.

I agree that we should be proud of the social protection system. It does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to poverty. It does, unfortunately, leave people below the poverty line in many circumstances, and that is why we also need to ensure that we are investing in quality services that reduce the expenditure needs of households so that people have the supports and tools they need to get back into good circumstances and out of poverty and that we move people out of poverty for good.

It is vitally important that we talk more about the HAP payment because the fact that the top-ups are causing so much financial distress for households is often hidden. We must acknowledge that the vast majority of homeless families are headed by someone parenting alone, usually a mother. We must also acknowledge that the impact of family homelessness and the housing crisis is very gendered.

I fully agree that we need to start doing things differently when it comes to addressing poverty. If we look to other countries like New Zealand, for example, it has amended its budgetary legislation to ensure that all decisions that are part of the budgetary process are assessed against their impact on poverty and inequality, ensuring that they are actively reducing it. That is something that we would like to see incorporated into the budgetary process here. There is a lot of scope within the ongoing work in terms of well-being measures that are being undertaken by the Government in that regard.