Ms Karen Kiernan:

I am aware I am putting my hand up a lot.

I think there are a couple of opportunities to try to challenge the philosophy at the moment. One is the new iteration, as I mentioned, of Better Outcomes Brighter Futures that is being worked on. I have sat on the advisory council for that for the past six or seven years and the council has been very clear that our main focus is child poverty and that we would like a national child poverty action plan to be developed that is cross-departmental. There are other countries, such as New Zealand and Scotland, that do that very well and have it based in legislation. Every Department centres the needs of children so this does not become a value judgment about the parents. Research tells us that people make judgments about different kinds of parents for different reasons. We need to circumvent that at a State level.

There is another opportunity. Cosc defines the non-payment of child maintenance as financial abuse, but that is not reflected anywhere in legislation, services from the Department of Social Protection or anywhere else. There is therefore an opportunity for some leadership on that language and to show to parents who do not pay maintenance that it is financial abuse not only of their former partner but also of their child.