Dr. Tricia Keilthy:

Sure. I thank Deputy Ward for his kind words about the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. The Deputy asked what the target would look like. Currently, we do not have a child poverty target. The previous one ended in 2020. The data are not published but it looks like we will not make that and we could be quite far off. It was to reduce the number of children living in consistent poverty to 37,000 or fewer by 2020.

All of us here would agree that a new target should effectively be zero. We do not want any child to grow up in poverty. A target in and off itself will not do this and we need resources behind the target. We need political will and accountability mechanisms in order to ensure a child poverty strategy or plan can be implemented properly. The National One Parent Family Alliance wants a headline child poverty target for all children but also a sub-target for lone parents, given there are such high rates of poverty in one-parent families. There should be very targeted actions directed towards families and children who are parenting alone. It is really important from our perspective as we have never had a sub-target specifically for lone parents. As Ms Kiernan mentioned, the EU child guarantee provides that framework because particularly at-risk and vulnerable children are named in that guarantee. That would also include children of ethnic minorities, those in care and homeless children as well. We must ensure we are naming, measuring and targeting those children while providing support to them as well.

The Deputy mentioned the SUSI grant and one of the most effective actions would be to support more lone parents into further and higher education. If somebody is trying to balance caring responsibilities with work and study, it may be impossible. Opening that to part-time study is something we see as potentially really effective. We know the SUSI scheme is being reviewed by the Minister with responsibility for further education and we have written to him about that request. We are hopeful that when the review is completed, it will be one of the recommendations. It would require legislative change and budgetary considerations but would be one of the best investments the Government could make.