Ms Michelle Murphy:

We welcomed the measures because they provided temporary relief but we did point out at the time they did not address income adequacy. We cannot address child poverty without looking at the adults in the household. Children are dependants so we have to look at household income. Temporary additional payments support the recipient in that short period but social welfare rates are neither benchmarked to inflation or average earnings. The previous iteration of this committee published a report recommending that they be benchmarked to earnings and that social welfare rates and earnings be indexed over time. That is how we get to a point where temporary measures are not used to deal with a cost-of-living crisis. We have not benchmarked it and that is why we are in the situation we are in now with rising child poverty, rising numbers in consistent poverty and not being able to reach modest enough poverty targets.

We would not look for one-off measures again. We need to look at the households most impacted. Research has been done by us, the CSO, the ESRI and the Central Bank to look at where in the income distribution those households are and whether they are on fixed incomes or in employment. It is generally people who are earning and paying tax at the standard rate and under, that is, those households who earn €40,000 or less, because they do not get any benefits from the permanent tax cuts that have been made which are going up the income distribution. There is a redistribution of resources going to households that do not need it.

We need to look at child benefit and the qualified child payment. We welcomed statements about looking at the second-tier child benefit payment but we have had two budgets where two taoisigh referenced them as being child poverty budgets but we did not see the resources. That is why we are looking for an increase in child benefit. The Government needs to look at those households and target the money there. The gap has already opened up as a result of the disparity between temporary and permanent measures.

Going to the Deputy's point on students and children in school, we are looking for an expansion of the hot school meals programme to DEIS secondary schools and increasing the maintenance grant because that would reach those households which are struggling, as well as other measures. The Government needs to target permanent, ongoing measures to those households and put income adequacy at the core. If we are reaching a point where we will feel some sort of economic headwinds as a result of tariffs and changing distribution of where corporation tax will be booked, the one thing we should have learned from the last crisis is that those at the bottom, who are reliant on public services and are really vulnerable, should not be asked to pay like they were before.