Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy very much. I appreciate his comments at the outset as well. I acknowledge his personal interest and experience in this area.

Specifically with regard to issues of consistent poverty, it is an absolute agenda by Government to decrease the numbers of children experiencing poverty. It is for that reason there is within the Department of the Taoiseach a unit dedicated to eradicating child poverty. Many initiatives have been taken to date. I can speak from my experience in my previous Department about issues such as access to free schoolbooks and hot school meals. They have all been seen as a positive step in this direction. In terms of this Department, significant work has begun to ensure that all children have access to supports from an early age in terms of early learning. It is interesting to note that even in terms of ECCE, more than 70% of parents say they would never have accessed that free tuition opportunity if it had not been for the fact that it was free and accessible. That is about levelling the playing pitch and that is what we are about here. We also have programmes like First Start, recognising where there are particular areas of disadvantage that particular additional resources would be applied for.

In addition to that, other schemes are in place to ensure that children with disabilities also have equality of opportunity. That is very much part of the AIM scheme. We have seen an extension within that scheme to include supports to ECCE-aged children by three hours per day and six additional hours per day out of term. Then, of course, there is the absolute access to childcare and the work we are doing to support parents to ensure there is a reduction in cost and greater availability. The Deputy referenced the fee cap that was introduced for the very first time this year, which will ensure that more and more parents are in a position to access that support and, of course, we have the free freeze as well. The Young Ireland implementation, which was launched in November of 2023, recognises that no one single Department can really tackle this issue. It has to be cross-departmental; it has to be all different Departments working together. We will continue to drive out that agenda.

Other aspects would be to continue to ensure that we are rolling out more and more supports. One that I am particularly interested in, because it builds on the DEIS model we have in our primary and post-primary schools, is the Equal Start programme to which €25 million has been allocated. It is very much specific to this equality of access for children who are most at risk. That is just a flavour of some of the measures.