Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair and welcome the Taoiseach. I was delighted to hear the Taoiseach pick up on the programme for Government because something we have been trying to do is flag certain issues that align with the work of the Joint Committee on Gender Equality. I want to use my time to draw his attention to two areas in the programme for Government, which pertain to what we are dealing with at the committee, namely, the section on anti-poverty and social inclusion measures. The first is something I raised with the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, when he came to the committee and is around gender and equality budgeting. I know the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of Finance have done excellent work on well-being budgeting which encapsulates gender equality budgeting. The Committee on Budgetary Oversight has also looked at gender budgeting. However, in every budget we are hoping to see a fully tested and gender equality budgeted budget, if that makes sense. We want to see every measure and every policy put forward with sufficient data. What the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, and other Ministers who have appeared before us have said is that they will come to Cabinet with those details but sometimes that detail is not within the public sphere. What is the development in terms of well-being budgets and gender budgeting and making all that information fundamentally a part of budget decision-making and making it legible not just to people in Leinster House but to NGOs which I know would find that incredibly useful? I know it is difficult sometimes in Ireland to get one's hands on enough disaggregated data to make it meaningful in terms of decision-making.

My second question is also on that section and is borne out of some of the discussions around the referendum where we talked a lot about how it interacts with the rights of children and how we recognise marriage and those kind of things. In the programme for Government, we have committed to reform our child maintenance system and address key issues such as calculation, facilitation and enforcement. I know many parents, in particular lone parents, find it difficult to chase maintenance. It is an ongoing issue that the women's caucus has called out. Since we have committed to it in the programme for Government, what are the developments on child maintenance?