Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their contributions. I did not anticipate how anxious this conversation would make me today, but it has. It is clear we know all the solutions and we know what helps and what does not. We know about increased child benefit, social housing, the resourcing of services and multi-annual funding, but there is something lacking in how we engage with the systems. It is like we have created this idea that opportunity exists or if we create more opportunities we just need people to avail of them. However, that is not accurate. It is a myth if we do not begin to address the actual inequality in people's environments and their ability to engage with or recognise an opportunity even if the funding systems are available.

I believe all these solutions and these policy areas are existing in something invisible, the bubble we are not talking about, which is a State and policy agenda that is primarily neoliberal. That is infecting policy relating to childcare and housing. How can we address this if we do not talk about some of the larger, top-down issues, instead of forcing people to feel the shame of poverty and to discuss in their communities how they solve their poverty that they did not even help to create in the first place? It existed before they were born. How can we start having real conversations about how we invest rapidly and aggressively in communities, pay people to go to education and pay people well in their employment and start talking about progressive tax systems so we can end child poverty and support women? My question is for Ms McKenna and perhaps Ms Kiernan or Dr. Keilthy. Are we failing to have those larger conversations about systems and the structural inequality that exists? If we do not start looking at that, we will only be moving from each of those policy points and trying to fix them. Is there something larger we should be doing so we are not only lifting the luckiest people or the ones who can recognise the opportunity but whereby we can transcend whole communities beyond poverty, not just lucky women, lucky families, those who could engage and those who might have had a little support? Does anybody have thoughts on how we can take whole communities out, not just create opportunities for some of the luckiest within those communities?