Dr. Tricia Keilthy:

The child poverty and well-being unit has been retained. Its work is ongoing, which we think is an important function in terms of having a co-ordinated response to the issue of child poverty. We have seen big investment in hot school meals and free schoolbooks. We have DEIS+ as well, which is a positive initiative. The two areas where we are not seeing progress are income supports for families - particularly children living in one-parent families and households where there is a disability, which consistently have the highest rates of poverty - and the linked question of the number of children growing up in homelessness, which continues to rise month on month. A sustained focus on income supports and child homelessness, as well as all the important early intervention supports we spoke about earlier, is crucially important if we are going to turn the tide on homelessness and child poverty.