Ms Susanne Rogers:

I have some thoughts. The welfare rate is not adequate and I think there has been a lot of work done on that. Our friends in the Vincentian Partnership have shown that the MESL is so important because it is an agreed standard for everybody, and not just those in receipt of social welfare. One should not be under this level. I am always conscious that the Insolvency Service of Ireland's reasonable living allowance, which it puts into place when someone goes bankrupt or insolvent, uses the MESL as the base. One arm of government says that someone who is bankrupt will be allowed a certain amount of money every month on which to get by - again, standard social welfare does not come anywhere near it - and another arm of government is saying that this is how much a person needs but we will not give it to them. I find that very difficult to meet in the middle. There is talk of developing a new national child poverty target. The exact point is that child poverty is family poverty if there is inadequate income in the household. Parents do their best - we all hear similar stories of parents going without certain things so their children can have them - but that causes stress and kids pick up on this. The kids know that their family is different and is not really managing things. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul and Dr. Micheál Collins did a piece of work a couple of years ago which found that the cost of poverty is not just on individual families. It is more than emotional and social; it is economic as well. It simply does not make sense to have hundreds of thousands of people living in poverty. I am always conscious that anybody who thinks that €220 per week is enough to get by on has never done it.