Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)

I want to pick up on the issue of child poverty. The ESRI was in with us earlier. One of the questions I asked, because I genuinely want to understand it, related to a recent report which says that one in five children is living in poverty, with the tag-on line that this is the case if housing is included. Obviously every child has to live somewhere, so that made zero sense to me. I feel that it lets the Government off the hook a bit with regard to the finding that one in five children is living in poverty. It was explained to me that it is part of the way the CSO does not include housing in its metrics for analysis of poverty. That seems like a major omission. Has this come up? What are the views of the witnesses on this? I hear Micheál Martin say that he wants to tackle the issue of child poverty yet one in five children are living in poverty under his Government. That is just nonsense then. They are just words, not actions. On using housing as a measure of calculating poverty, how does that have an impact on policies?