Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

On metrics and how the Department measures the success of our welfare system, we measure issues such as workforce participation, deprivation and consistent poverty. I have one eye to the work being done by the Government on the well-being indices, which is under way. Are there other measures we use in regard to our social welfare outputs, such as well-being? Do we have health outcome data on the effects of reducing poverty in certain cohorts? One issue that has come home to me over the course of the pandemic in particular, although I am sure it applies at all times, relates to subjective measures of community participation or people experiencing loneliness, for example. Some people question the merit of subjective measures but I think they are important and they have a role to play. The Department is probably uniquely positioned to gather such data on people living alone, for example.

Has the Department begun work to evaluate our Covid response in the context of key policy outcomes? I refer to lone parents and how difficult they must have found the period of home-schooling in particular. They would have been receiving payments from the State, but are they now more distanced than ever from the workforce? Are we keeping an eye on that and on how our Covid response has affected those particularly vulnerable cohorts? Is this informing our future budgetary decisions?