Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)

I thank the Chair and the witnesses for their time. In 2018, Leo Varadkar launched a child poverty strategy with a package of measures, he said, to tackle early childhood poverty. That was a ten-year strategy to take us up to 2028, so we are not there yet. There was another cross-departmental group in 2023, and there is another one now in 2025. It is getting a bit difficult to have faith in the strategies that are just announcements. In the intervening time between 2018 and now, from what I have seen, rates of consistent child poverty have been going in the wrong direction and have been increasing.

I am not trying to put words in anyone's mouth but it strikes me we have a fair amount of research. There is a fair amount of data available. More data should be available in terms of the impact of housing costs and including those. That is relatively simple to achieve given that the people who are in emergency accommodation, the children specifically, are likely to be engaged with the Department of Social Protection. They are a group that are slightly easier to reach than some who exist on the margins.

I do not doubt the bona fides of any politician who says they want to tackle child poverty. To be honest, who would not? The people with the power to do it seem to never have enough data to be able to actually do it and always seem to be short of one report or one statistic. Given the breadth of data available now and if we have sufficient data, do the witnesses think it is time we moved on from analysing it and had a measure or whatever you want to call it, such as additional child benefit or whatever the mechanism? I agree with Dr. O'Connor that the money in cash transfers is what helps people to get out of poverty. That is just a fact and we can put any kind of label we want on it. The latest information from the Department and the Minister is that it is doing an exploration of a targeted child benefit rate. Is there a sufficiency of research for people to be able to just take it and start to actually try to reverse and stabilise the trend of increasing child poverty and maybe even improve those levels, given the level of surplus we have in the State?