Mr. John Bohan:

I will leave her to judge that. I wish to make a correction to the statistic she quoted. I realise it is very difficult to discuss statistics on this area. I said that a quarter of children were in jobless households. That has meant that 50% of children in poverty are in jobless households. It is just a different way of presenting the same statistics. I offer to send the committee our jobless household studies so members can see some of the basic statistics there.

I am loth to comment on the roles of other Departments, so I will say something general and something specific. Generally the Government's strategy on poverty is based on the premise that all aspects of Government policy have an impact on poverty because poverty is multidimensional. Given that it is so multidimensional it is incumbent on every Department to examine its proposals and schemes to ensure it is having a positive impact on poverty. We remind them whenever a social-impact assessment or poverty-impact assessment is to be undertaken. As part of the implementation of the review of the national poverty target, we are hoping to strengthen that role in the whole process. That is the general point.

Specifically, the National Action Plan for Social Inclusion 2007-2016 attributes a number of actions to individual Departments. There are certainly some actions attributed to the Department of Justice and Equality and the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, which used to be the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Some of those have migrated with the FÁS services to our Department, so my answer is somewhat complex. I can send the committee the list of actions from the national action plan, which will give members an idea of the specific actions the Government has asked those Departments to take on poverty. We update those actions regularly and we tend to complete it in time for the social inclusion forum. After that we might send the committee that list and members can get an idea.