Ms Niamh Kelly:

On the question of childcare, I agree with the Deputy that without childcare, it is very difficult to see how we can address things like ensuring access to employment and education. The same extends to a variety of other areas. For example, we know that one-parent families are more likely to be in insecure and poor quality housing. Without a secure place to live, it is very difficult for families to engage in things like education or get access to employment because they are so concerned about keeping a roof over their heads.

The Deputy mentioned benchmarking, which is something we see as crucial because without a standard of living that meets people's needs they cannot survive or get by.

They cannot think about anything outside their immediate crisis circumstances. It is imperative that the payments made to families through the Department of Social Protection are enough to meet their needs.

We see a good example in this regard from the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice research over the last number of years. Social welfare payments to older households, through measures taken at Government level, have been sufficient to meet their needs and over the last number of years those households have fared adequately - I do not want to say well - in terms of social protection. We see at the opposite end with one-parent families that where families are on working family payment, for example, they are faring particularly badly. Under the most recent budget, they were seen to come out slightly below the cost of living increases. The measures are there. The benchmarking of social welfare is something that can be included in a targeted approach to families, but it needs the other service pieces. It requires things such as childcare, housing and access to employment and education to be addressed.

In terms of education, there are a number of good schemes available. Often parents are not made aware of them or they are not given a pathway to enter the schemes for education or even employment. We hear time and again from parents who say they are being activated into a particular role that does not suit their skills set or that they would like to get back into education to upskill. To address child poverty families need to be earning a decent wage whereby they can pay for their housing costs and all the costs associated with raising children. These families want to provide for themselves. They want to be able to get ahead and to have enough education to build a life for themselves, rather than just constantly relying on social protection. A key part would be addressing a number of anomalies in the system.

There are a number of issues with regard to education. For example, the Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, grant is not available for part-time courses. That is a real barrier for one-parent families, particularly when their childcare needs are taken into account. There are other anomalies. If somebody is on jobseeker's transitional payment, JST, or one-parent family payment and is in receipt of rent supplement, the person is automatically moved back to the training and education allowance, which precludes the person from getting a SUSI maintenance grant. There was a good example last year. The Minister for Social Protection implemented a law called Catherine's law which stopped the means testing of PhD stipends for people in receipt of disability allowance, yet the means testing still exists for people on one-parent family payment and jobseeker's transitional payment.

These are some examples of technical issues in the system that could be ironed out and benefit families, but these small technical changes have to be underpinned by a widespread benchmarking of social protection against a minimum essential standard of living. The way to achieve that refers back to what Ms Kiernan said about the need for a national child poverty strategy. All the measures we are discussing today are of value and it is worthwhile looking at implementing them, but without that overarching strategy there is no coherent approach and no protection for children against shocks to the system that could come. For example, inflation is a big issue at present. What we need is a concerted effort from the Government that is long-term, sustainable and looks at all these different areas and brings them together.

I hope that answers the Deputy's question.