Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 15 October 2025

Joint Committee on Social Protection, Rural and Community Development

Child Poverty: Discussion

2:00 am

Dr. Nat O'Connor:

Just on one aspect of what is being said there, in a household with disability and having children, often we do not have sufficient data. There is a question there for the Government if it will give more money to the CSO to do bigger surveys in order that we can actually see that fine-grain data and know what is going on. That is one choice. Another is that the Government could fund bespoke research and, again, investigate things. In the context here, we used to have a Combat Poverty Agency that was abolished in 2009, which produced a steady stream of analysis which meant that the Government could make decisions. It had that information to hand. We do not really have that any more. It has not been replaced. That is a gap we are seeing now in that we do not have enough research or enough good-quality data to let us get into the fine-grain analysis.

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