Ms Susanne Rogers:

We used the phrase accident of birth earlier in the room. I have probably passed through six or seven different Dublins on my way here. I imagine anybody coming in from further afield has done the same.

Ideally, all those different children from all those different parts of Dublin should, in theory, all have the same opportunities, on paper, to get an education and access to third level and to the supports they need. In reality, this is not what is happening. Going back to the budget, we did not really see it. If I recall, and I know this has gone on record and I could be wrong about it, but I think that as part of the speeches, it was framed as a child poverty budget and then there was €300 million. We would be saying that is not really a child poverty budget if it is only €300 million that will be dedicated to anything in this area. This is because it comes down to resources, housing and those family supports. Those family supports must also be really easy to access. Someone, for example, might think they are actually doing a good job of being a parent and might not consider they need help. In an informal setting, though, where we are having a chat, that person might say they do not do something or did not know something was available. The setting needs to be a little bit more informal as well so it is not a case of people thinking they are doing a bad job or someone else thinking they are doing a bad job. It is just that people are doing a job but they could probably do it better and pick up things as they go along.

We never mentioned youth work because we are obviously talking about children. If we are talking about children under the age of 18, then youth work was not in the budget at all. My favourite tool is Ctrl+F on the expenditure reports and the budget speeches. Youth work did not get a single mention. Youth is only mentioned in terms of justice, at which stage we are too late. What we see as antisocial behaviour is actually social behaviour. When we see gangs of kids and teenagers, we immediately go oh oh, but this is what young people do. I just think it was very disappointing to see no mention of youth work at all in the budget yesterday. We write amazing policy but we need to implement and resource it. We know exactly who we are talking about and where they are. We talk about hard-to-reach people and areas. I am not buying that any more. We know exactly where people are and who they are.

Just to touch on it, I am glad disability came up because we had not really covered it in our opening statement. I am referring either to children living with disabilities or living in households where somebody is disabled. Again, we know where these households are and who is in them. Again, Ctrl+F is our best friend when it comes to those expenditure reports. I thank the committee.