Ms Tanya Ward:

The interaction has been very good. It is welcome that the unit is being established in the Department of the Taoiseach. This has happened a couple of times. It first happened with the Brown-Blair British Government and was one of the groundbreaking things it did. Of course, the Tories got rid of it. Similar ones opened in New Zealand and Scotland. Those units tried to bring addressing poverty to the heart of political decision-making. The Department of the Taoiseach is important because it is the Department that probably has the most influence on other Ministries in getting things done. The thing about that unit, and any of these kinds of measure, is it will take about ten years. It will take nearly ten budgets to try to row back the impact of poverty.