Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. On the medical card, the key issue with the enhanced medical card we will provide to 19,000 former residents is that it requires a legislative basis. That has been the case in terms of survivors of the Magdalen institutions and survivors of the industrial schools as well. We need a legislative basis for the provision of a large volume of medical cards. That is why we are looking to move the legislation underpinning the institutions payment scheme as quickly as possible. My official are working on the heads right now and we hope to have them to the committee for pre-legislative scrutiny as quickly as possible.

On the issue of domestic, sexual and gender based violence, DSGBV, apologies to Deputy Cairns that I did not get to answer her question on that. I might cover some of that as well. I will be speaking about in the Dáil later this evening also. The consultation phase of the third national strategy on DSGBV will be launched soon. That is being led by the Department of Justice. Government has taken a strategic approach in that the issue and the Government's response to DSGBV will now be led by the Department of Justice.

The Deputy summarised the reason for that very well when she spoke about many Departments, agencies, local authorities and health services all doing little bits, which reflects fragmentation. We recognised that in the programme for Government. That is why we set up an audit to identify where everything is being done right now and how we can bring it together. The Government has now taken that decision. We will bring it together under the Department of Justice under a new entity that will be operated by that Department. That will mean responsibility for the provision of refuge and those services to which the Deputy referred will not be overseen by my Department or by Tusla. Responsibility for that will be transferred to the Department of Justice. That is a strategic decision the Government has taken, recognising the major challenge we have with domestic, sexual and gender-based violence in this country. Centralising everything under that Department will allow for the delivery of the refuge spaces we need. Everybody recognises we do not have enough refuges or refuge spaces. There are significant parts of the country where counties like the Deputy's do not have such coverage and where in physical areas in larger counties it would take a hour and a half to drive to a refuge, which is an immediate disincentive to someone who might feel in real and desperate need. There is a commitment under the capital allocation scheme, CAS, from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to finance refuge spaces but there is also a recognition that the CAS process is lengthy. That is one of the problems we identified, namely, that it takes such a long time to build a new refuge, as well as there being a lack of spaces. In our response to the accommodation review, which we hope to publish next week, again led by the Minister, Deputy McEntee, through the third national strategy, we will outline how we will address those particular issues.

The Deputy might drop me a note on the details of the child care education issue she highlighted in Carlow, which I will be happy to follow up with my officials.

On child poverty, a key measure being taken is that we are investing in the EU child guarantee, an EU mandated approach to supporting free access to childcare, education and health for children in need. The Government will be submitting its action plan to respond to the EU child guarantee by the end of March. Our response to the EU child guarantee will be located within our wider successor strategy to Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures, BOBF, our all-of-government approach to children and young people. That strategy ended in 2020. We are designing the successor strategy now, addressing child poverty. Making sure again that we have a co-ordinated all-of-government approach to addressing child poverty will be central to the BOBF successor strategy. I will be working with the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, in the Department of Rural and Community Development on the designation of a new child poverty reduction target that the country needs to adopt. That is all those elements covered.