Ms Camille Loftus:

I thank the Chair and committee members for allowing us to come before it today. The End Child Poverty Coalition is a coalition of eight organisations. We have copies of our submission for members.

We have been working for some time on various measures to try to eradicate the scourge of child poverty in this country. Our perspective on the reforms is that we are very much pro-reform. We have been advocating for reform for a number of years, and we have been advocating for much more progressive reform than has been implemented. We have put on the record on numerous occasions our opposition to flat-rate cuts in child benefit, which are highly regressive in nature. We note that in recent years nearly €500 million has been taken from child income supports. Cumulatively, when we examine the impact of child benefit cuts, smaller families have suffered a cut of more than a fifth in their child benefit payments and larger families have suffered a cut of one third in child benefit payments.

Probably with the exception of young people who are unemployed, no other group in society has been asked to carry as heavy a burden of adjustment as this country’s children. The cuts have gone far enough and we cannot sustain any further flat-rate cuts to child benefit. We are broadly in favour of reform. We have advocated for a two-tier structure of child income support for a number of years. However, we offer that support with a number of very important caveats, the first of which relates to low-income working families. They are currently eligible for family income supplement, FIS, a vital support within the social protection system to ensure that work does indeed pay and that it is capable of providing a route out of poverty for low-income families. Every single report in recent years – they go back more than 20 years – which has examined a two-tier type structure for child income support has always identified that a residual FIS-type scheme would be required, as a two-tier payment cannot be a simple replacement for something like family income support because it plays a very specific role in the social protection system. We are deeply concerned that the Mangan report proposes to replace one of the child income supports with the second-tier payment. That would mean a number of families that are in receipt of family income supplement, for whom it is an even more vital supplement now than it ever was, would face losses five to six times higher than families at the very top end of the income distribution. It is a fundamental structural adjustment to the social protection system which reduces the incentive to participate in paid employment and would undoubtedly reinforce child poverty and trap families who are unemployed.

The ESRI considered the impact of securing higher take-up rates on FIS and the impact that would have on child poverty. Its estimate a number of years ago was that it would secure a 3% reduction in child poverty rates. The Mangan report, by comparison, achieves a reduction of 0.2% in poverty. There are much more efficient ways we can go about doing this. We believe that if a second-tier payment is to be introduced it is critically important that FIS is retained within the system until a better in-work benefit has been identified. We cannot get rid of FIS until a better alternative is in place.

We are also concerned about the withdrawal cut-off point that was identified in the Mangan report, which is as low as €25,000. We had an opportunity to meet with the Minister for Social Protection yesterday and she indicated to us that the Mangan report has been asked to examine different cut-off points. We take some hope from that because we feel the cut-off point is far too low and will result in hardship for a number of families on low incomes.

The final point we wish to make is about investment in child services. We know from work internationally and in this country that if we really want to achieve a meaningful impact on child poverty that it is investment in services for children that is likely to achieve the best results. We look, for example, to initiatives such as the free preschool year for children as being progressive measures in terms of achieving much better child welfare outcomes.

I mentioned that over €500 million in savings has been accrued so far from cuts to child benefit. We would like to see some of that directed towards enhanced services for children. We give a couple of examples in our paper such as investment in schoolbooks for children, a second year of preschool education or after-school provision, and resources to strengthen primary health care to ensure children have access to the health care they need at an early stage in their lives. These are the measures we would like to see some investment in, and we would like to see some of the savings accrued to date clawed back to ensure we get better outcomes for children because there is no doubt that unless we move in that direction, the legacy of this crisis will continue for many years to come. Those children who have been asked to carry a disproportionate share of the cost of adjustment will bear that cost for many years to come in terms of restricted development opportunities. Those are our three key points. I thank the members for their time.