Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the witnesses for coming before the committee and sharing their experiences. There are over 200,000 children at risk of poverty in Ireland and more than 90,000 are in consistent poverty. This means they do not have guaranteed access to sufficient food, shelter, healthcare and other essentials I think most of us take for granted. Those are truly shocking figures. The representatives' submissions and experiences are essential insights to help the committee understand and advocate for the change we urgently need. If I have time, I have three questions for the Children's Rights Alliance and one for SPARK.

I was struck by Ms Ward's inclusion of the concept of childproofing local and national development plans to meet the needs of young people. During the development of the county development plan for Cork County Council this year, we did a consultation with primary schools and transition years. It was a really fascinating process. It came about because we felt we did not hear enough from young people. Politicians are contacted all the time and our constituency offices are always inundated but they are always from the older populations and of course we represent the younger population too. For the most part, all the children wanted or were calling for was safe infrastructure to walk and cycle to school. They were really sensible and reasonable requests. There were some other very good ones like slides from the top of town into the sea and stuff like that. I would love Ms Ward to elaborate on this concept of childproofing and how it can be achieved. It is really important.

Secondly, we know the State spends 0.3% of GDP on early years, which is well below the European average of 0.8% and the UNICEF recommendation benchmark of 1%. Ms Ward emphasised the need to provide free access to childcare for families on the lowest incomes through the national childcare scheme for families in receipt of a medical card. Will she expand a bit more on the importance of this kind of measure?

Thirdly, she highlighted the acute nature of child poverty in Ireland, cited the school meals programme as being an important State response and rightly called for the programme to ensure all children have access to hot, nutritious meals daily in education settings.

My understanding is that this will have multiple benefits in terms of nutrition, participation in education and the behavioural impact. Will the representatives elaborate a little more on the impact it could have?

Ms Bayliss highlighted the systematic and specific issues faced by single parent families, of which we are all aware. She particularly highlighted issues around domestic abuse as we approach the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence and stated that the key solution to ending gender-based violence is to offer parents real options to leave abusers. Currently, it can be even more difficult to leave existing abusive and violent situations because of the risk of poverty, homelessness and, often, as we have learned recently, loss of citizenship, which is often linked to a partner and makes it difficult to leave abusive situations. Will Ms Bayliss suggest some actions we should put to the Departments of Social Protection and Housing, Local Government and Heritage to tackle these issues?

If I have asked too many questions, a written response is fine. I am not sure if I have enough time.