Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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We have received apologies from Senator Nikki Bradley. The agenda item for consideration this morning is child poverty and deprivation. From Social Justice Ireland, SJI, we are joined by Ms Susanne Rogers, research and policy analyst. From the Children's Rights Alliance, CRA, we have Dr. Naomi Feely, policy director, and Dr. Siobhán O'Reilly, senior education officer. From Early Childhood Ireland, ECI, we are joined by Ms Teresa Heeney, CEO, and Ms Valerie McArdle, policy officer. From the National One Parent Family Alliance, NOPFA, we are joined by Ms Karen Kiernan and Ms Louise Bayliss. Ms Bayliss is also head of social justice and policy at the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. You are all very welcome and thank you for taking the time to join us. Representatives of Pobal were invited to attend the meeting but due to other commitments, were not available to attend.

The purpose of this meeting is to discuss with stakeholders the challenges facing children living or at risk of living in poverty. As we know that too many children in Ireland are living below the poverty line, this is a really important topic.

Before we begin, I have a few housekeeping matters to go through. I would like to advise you all that the chat function on MS Teams should only be used to make the team on site aware of any technical issues or urgent matters that may arise and should not be used to make general comments or statements during the meeting. I would also like to remind members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex in order to participate in public meetings. I will not permit a member to participate where he or she is not adhering to this constitutional requirement. Therefore, any member who attempts to participate from outside the precincts will be asked to leave the meeting. In this regard, I ask any member partaking via MS Teams to confirm prior to making his or her contribution to the meeting that he or she is on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.

In advance of inviting our witnesses to deliver their opening statements, I want to advise them of the following in relation to parliamentary privilege. You are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the presentation you are about to make to the committee. This means that you have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything you say at the meeting. However, you are expected not to abuse this privilege and it is my duty as Cathaoirleach to ensure this privilege is not abused. Therefore, if your statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity you will be directed to discontinue your remarks. It is imperative that you comply with any such direction. Witnesses will all be allocated three minutes speaking time to deliver their opening statements and that will be followed by a question-and-answer session from our members, who are all female this morning, but I assure the witnesses we have some males on our committee as well. I will call on the witnesses in the following order: Ms Susanne Rogers, followed by Dr. Naomi Feely, Ms Teresa Heeney and Ms Louise Bayliss. I will be popping out at some stage because I have a question in the Dáil Chamber but my Vice Chair, Deputy Aisling Dempsey, will be taking over for that, so there will be a little changing of the guard, as they say. I now invite Ms. Rogers to deliver her opening statement.

Ms Susanne Rogers:

Social Justice Ireland welcomes the opportunity to make a submission to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Children and Equality on the topic of child poverty and deprivation. Child poverty does not exist in a vacuum. Children live in families, households and society. They are impacted by the physical environment in which they live. They are also one of the most vulnerable groups in any society. Consequently, the issue of child poverty deserves particular attention. The current surplus of resources available to the Government represents a major opportunity to address once and for all this persistent and damaging problem. Childhood lasts a lifetime and childhood experiences of poverty are linked with adverse outcomes in almost all areas of life. A recent study found that even a short-term or one-off experience of poverty in childhood is enough to affect a child's development. The establishment of a child poverty and well-being programme office in the Department of the Taoiseach is a welcome development and one that must be continually underpinned by real strategic action. It is an acknowledgement that Ireland is experiencing high, stubborn levels of child poverty, that the issue is multifaceted and it also demonstrates a willingness to tackle it Child poverty, however, is essentially an issue of low-income families. One in seven children is affected, or one in five once housing costs are factored in. This figure highlights the scale of such households across the State. Investments made now, while requiring considerable resources, will reap substantial rewards for individuals and society in the longer term. Child poverty solutions hinge on issues such as adequate adult social welfare rates, decent rates of pay and conditions for working parents and adequate and available public services.

If the Government really wants to deliver on child poverty and well-being commitments, then it must make income adequacy for vulnerable households and investment in public services and infrastructure a priority.

Adequate levels of social welfare are essential to addressing poverty. In general, the fluctuations in the poverty rates of those largely dependent on the welfare system has correlated in the past with policy moves that allowed the value of welfare payments to fall behind wage growth before eventually increasing these payments to catch up. This highlights the need for sustainable solutions over reliance on short-term interventions.

The Government has clear anti-poverty commitments outlined in the current roadmap for social inclusion and the sustainable development goals. Given that those most at risk of poverty are often the most reliant on the social protection system, if they are not to fall behind the rest of society at times of economic growth, the benchmarking of welfare rates to wage rates is essential.

Our submission focuses on the six areas identified by the child poverty and well-being programme office as having the potential to make the most difference to those children living in poverty. These measures are wide ranging - from the benchmarking and indexation of social welfare rates to the living wage, housing first for families and refundable tax credits for low income workers. We look forward to engaging with the committee on these issues.

Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Rogers very much. We now go to Dr. Feely.

Dr. Naomi Feely:

The Children's Rights Alliance really welcomes the opportunity to be here today to discuss the important issue of child poverty and deprivation.

We know from the most recent data from the CSO that children have one of the highest rates of poverty, in particular when we look at poverty across all age groups. There has been a notable spike in the rate of consistent poverty, rising from 4.8% in 2023 to 8.5% in 2024. This equates to an additional 45,000 children experiencing the worst form of poverty in Ireland.

The statistics are alarming, but they only provide information about a point in time. As my colleague, Susanne, has just mentioned, the impact and harm caused by poverty can have a profound and long-lasting effect. Research shows that long-term exposure to poverty impacts physical and mental health outcomes, including a poorer self-concept. Adults who have grown up with bad financial circumstances are almost twice as likely to report their health as being bad compared with those growing up in good financial circumstances.

The Children's Rights Alliance publishes a flagship publication, the Child Poverty Monitor, each year and we undertake a children's-rights based approach to examining child poverty and proposing solutions to it.

This framework promotes three integrated strategies, namely, access to adequate resources through income adequacy and measures to tackle food poverty; access to affordable quality services such as early childhood education and care and education, health, housing and accommodation, family support and alternative care and, critically; it also promotes children's participation both in play, culture, recreation and participation in decision-making.

I will briefly touch on each of these but I am very happy to have a deeper discussion on them with members. In terms of income, the Children's Rights Alliance is particularly concerned about the inadequacy of the income available to families containing older children and those headed by one adult. The latest data shows that social welfare supports meet just 64% of the minimum costs of children and young people attending second level education. This is in comparison with younger children in primary school where the income meets 88% of their needs. Children living in a one-parent household are almost three times more likely to experience deprivation as their peers living in a two-parent household.

When we think about the issue of food poverty, as food is the most flexible part of a family's budget, many families also experience food poverty with one in five individuals living in consistent poverty saying they are unable to afford a roast dinner once a week.

The latest Starting Strong report published by the OECD notes that children who participate in early childhood education and care are more likely to succeed in education and access secure jobs and are less likely to be engaged in crime, meaning that investment in quality services for children's early years leads to savings later on.

The introduction of the equal start model in May 2024 was a very welcome initiative in terms of tackling child poverty in children's early years in this regard. A significant increase in investment for equal start is really needed in order for us to break the cycle of poverty. In addition, we need a dedicated public health nurse, PHN, service for children and GPs working in areas with high levels of intergenerational trauma and poverty must be provided with increased resources. These initiatives, combined with home visiting and intensive family support services are critical in terms of preventing children and young people from having to be supported by Tusla's child protection and welfare services or being provided with alternative care.

Children and young people in schools located in communities experiencing persistent intergenerational poverty often experience trauma and adverse childhood experiences that require supports beyond the existing model of provision under DEIS. The Children's Rights Alliance welcomes the commitment by the Minister for Education and Youth on the development of a new DEIS plus programme. We also welcome the commitment in recent days the commitment of funding for this programme.

The issue of most critical importance to children is participation and the right to play. While participation structures for children and young people are well developed in Ireland, certain groups of children and young people can face a multitude of barriers when it comes to accessing spaces to play. These include a lack of green space in housing complexes or recreational spaces in homeless accommodation. The negative implications of play deprivation may be significant to a child's development, as play impacts their social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development. A commitment to establish a national policy on play in the First 5 strategy is very welcome. We really need cross-government actions to be included in it to address the unmet play needs of certain groups of children.

My colleague, Dr. Siobhán O'Reilly, and I are very happy to respond to any questions members have on this opening statement and our accompanying submission on child poverty, in addition to recent developments in budget 2026.

Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank Dr. Feely. I now call on Ms Heeney.

Ms Teresa Heeney:

I am the CEO of Early Childhood Ireland. My colleague, Ms Valerie McArdle, our policy officer, is with me. I thank the Chair and committee members for their invitation to discuss the acute problem of child poverty and deprivation.

Early Childhood Ireland is the leading children's advocacy and membership organisation. We work in partnership with our 4,000 plus members who operate early years services to achieve inclusive, high-quality experiences for every child in early years, school-age care settings, and in childminders' homes.

"The accident of birth is a major source of inequality" said the Nobel prize winning economist, Dr. James Heckman. A recent ESRI report provides supporting evidence for Heckman's concept, showing the long-term consequences for children born into disadvantage. It found that adults who experience childhood poverty are more likely to experience income poverty, material deprivation, poor health and unemployment or inactivity.

Crucially, there is a large body of evidence to suggest that these negative outcomes can be reduced when children participate in high-quality early childhood education. Participation can narrow developmental and socioeconomic gaps, enabling children to develop skills that are vital for success in life, education and work. It also allows families to participate in the labour market, education and training.

OECD research found that in Ireland, 54% of children from birth to two years of age from high-income families were enrolled in a formal early years setting, compared with only 7% of children from lower income families. The Government's own research found that fewer Traveller and Roma children avail of the ECCE programme when compared with the general population. These enrolment gaps highlight the need for comprehensive strategies to address barriers faced by disadvantaged households.

I will discuss some of the barriers. The equal start funding, which was introduced in 2024 was very welcome. It is currently only available to just 17% of settings in the country. Ireland still has no legal obligation to provide or guarantee a place in an early years setting for children. First 5 includes a commitment to "introduce a universal legal entitlement to pre-school" but this has not been delivered.

Ireland spends less than 0.2% of its GDP on early childhood education, compared with 0.9% of GDP, on average, across OECD countries. Due to poor pay and conditions, many settings have difficulty recruiting and retaining staff, which can lead to a reduction in services, and delayed capacity and expansion plans for providers and operators.

Many families cannot secure an early years place. There are over 62,000 children on a waiting list, 40,000 of whom are under the age of three.

Fees for parents remain among the highest in the OECD countries. The access and inclusion model, which is very welcome, remains limited only to children who participate in the ECCE programme. Attendance rules which require settings to record and report on children’s attendance to ensure the payment of the national childcare scheme, the ECCE programme and the access and inclusion model make it harder for settings to support vulnerable families. Regular attendance can be a challenge for children from disadvantaged groups due to a myriad of problems, including parental capacity, unstable housing conditions, transport and others. The most effective investment the Government can make to reduce child poverty is to provide a strong start in a child’s earliest years. Access to high-quality and inclusive early years experience is fundamental to this. Ireland should be brought up to the OECD investment average. Finally, Early Childhood Ireland believes that bringing early years graduates under public sector pay and conditions in line with teachers would go a long way in removing many barriers to early years and school-age care such as capacity and accessibility challenges for many disadvantaged families. I am happy to discuss the proposal as we continue our discussion.

Ms Louise Bayliss:

I thank the committee for the invitation to speak about child poverty on behalf of the National One Parent Family Alliance, which includes Barnardos, Focus Ireland, the national family resource centres, the National Women’s Council, One Family, SPARK, the Society of St. Vincent De Paul and Treoir.

At the outset, we are clear that children in one-parent families are the most impacted by poverty and deprivation, and they are disproportionately affected by the housing crisis. Today, 5,145 children are living in emergency accommodation, and we know the majority are from one-parent families. In the first eight months of this year, there was a net increase of 299 families in homelessness. 213 of those were in one-parent families. The survey on income and living conditions, SILC, data from March highlighted a rise in consistent poverty from 4.8% to 8.5%, but a more detailed analysis reveals the children behind those statistics. The rate of consistent poverty in the general population is 5%. Among two-parent households with up to three children, it is 6%. Among children in one-parent households, it is 11%. The increase from 4.8% to 8.5% was driven primarily by the rise in poverty among one-parent families, where the rate jumped from 7.1% to 11%, compared to a smaller increase of 1.5% among children in two-parent households. This is not an accident; it is the inevitable result of policies that are failing children in one-parent households. We know that the solutions are affordable, quality childcare; affordable housing; adequate social protection income that supports an education-first pathway out of poverty and social welfare; well-paid, family-friendly work; and robust enforcement of child maintenance orders. We know that if we get it right for one-parent families, the structures will work for all families.

There is a childcare crisis affecting all families, children and workers. While the national childcare scheme, NCS, has increased investment, significant costs remain for parents and supply is limited. Many lone parents work in the hospitality, retail and care sectors, outside the core hours offered by most childcare providers. The most recent figures show that only 87 childminders in the country are eligible for NCS subsidies. In housing, many one-parent households rely on a housing assistance payment. However, HAP limits do not reflect current market rents and many lone parents who should be paying a social housing rent are instead paying that plus high landlord top-ups. This is a key driver of poverty among one-parent families. Despite positive changes around flexible working, we are seeing a return to more office-based workdays. The current legislation on remote work does not robustly protect a worker’s right to work from home and many challenges at the Workplace Relations Commission have failed. Meanwhile, income supports for working lone parents have been eroded. In 2000, the income disregard for the one-parent family allowance allowed a lone parent to work 26.25 hours at minimum wage and retain their full social welfare payment. In 2025, that was dropped to 12.22 hours and in the 2026 budget it will go to 11.66 hours.

Our social protection system also fails to meet the minimum essential standard of living, MESL, for children. According to MESL 2025, only 88% of the needs of primary school-age children are met and only 64% of the needs of a second level child are met. Despite this shortfall, lone parents - unlike other long-term social welfare benefit recipients living alone - are not entitled to the living alone allowance or the household benefits package. There have been positive changes by the Department of Social Protection in how child maintenance payments are treated but unfortunately not by other Departments for secondary payments so many children are still losing out.

The core issue remains. Ireland still lacks a statutory child maintenance system that could help to lift children out of poverty. The ESRI’s Growing Up in Ireland survey found that only 36% to 38% of lone parents receive regular child maintenance. We call for the immediate implementation of the Department of justice's Review of the Enforcement of Child Maintenance Orders. We are happy to answer any questions the committee may have.

Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank all our witnesses for the effort they put into their comprehensive statements. With the agreement of members, I propose we publish the opening statements to the Oireachtas website. Agreed. Before I call on members to speak, I remind them - not that they need any reminding - that we have seven minutes and that needs to include time for the witnesses to answer as well. I will include a brief second round. Members should indicate to me at the end if they wish to speak again. When putting their questions, I ask members to ensure they strictly adhere to the agenda topic under consideration at this meeting. We do not have anyone on MS Teams. I will now call on members in accordance with the speaking rota circulated. We will take Deputy Emer Currie first, then Deputies Kerrane, Dempsey and Ó Murchú.

Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The witnesses are all very welcome today. I thank them for their thorough submissions. Regarding childcare, we are all aware that access to an early childhood learning and care system is essential for tackling disadvantage, for early intervention, for bridging socioeconomic disparity and for increased economic participation later on in life. Obviously, the day before yesterday we had the budget and the overall investment in childcare now stands at nearly €1.5 billion. It is important to note where we have come from, in that 50,000 children had access to the national childcare scheme just five years ago and we have 230,000 having access to it this year. The total value of the subsidies has gone from €50 million five years ago up to €420 million. That includes the universal subsidy but also, really importantly for today, the income-assessed subsidy which is now at an average hourly rate of €3.31. Therefore, there has been lots of progress. I think parents were aware that this was going to be a different type of budget from previous budgets but the consensus is that we are at a pivotal moment when it comes to childcare and change, addressing issues around supply and affordability and stepping into public provision as per the programme for Government. Obviously, this year's budget was year one out of five and all of those programme for Government commitments still stand. However, were the witnesses hoping for more of a statement of intent in the programme for Government and the roadmap for change that is in there? What do they need to hear now to be reassured that this change is coming, particularly the action plan that is also committed to within the programme for Government, whereby there will be broad consultation with people like themselves and with parents and providers about that change? How do they feel about this opportunity that we have? Will they also give their reflections on the budget please?

Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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We will start with Ms. Heeney, if that is okay.

Ms Teresa Heeney:

I thank Deputy Currie for her question. She is right: while we will always welcome increased investment, and Early Childhood Ireland will always acknowledge the improvement in early years and the levels of investment, the budget did not point to the direction of travel for the next five years. That certainly was not clear to us. We know the national action plan is forthcoming but it is not clear to us what is within the scope of this plan and if it will be about affordability and about access.

We found it to be very much a stand-still budget and in that regard, we feel the problems we are experiencing will continue until it is clear that something significant is going to change. The budget will not help with the ongoing issue of staff recruitment and retention, which everyone knows about. There is a triangle of issues. Capacity and accessibility is an issue, quality is an issue and affordability is an issue. It is more than a triangle now, as I see it. Staffing is key to all those issues. If we are going to invest in early years education, we are wasting our money if we are not investing in quality services. We do not want children going into warehouses, where someone watches them on CCTV. We want services where children can grow and develop and achieve the kinds of changes in their material lives they get because their early childhood education is of a high quality.

At the moment, we have a 25% annual staff turnover across the country, which we should all be really concerned about because it is significant. If one in four teachers were changing in the staff group of a primary school, there would be a high level of concern. In some parts of Dublin there is a turnover rate of 52% and that is scandalous. It is simply not good enough for those children.

Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I will give Dr. Feely a chance to come in as well in the time that is left. Ms Rogers also indicated.

Dr. Naomi Feely:

I will make a brief point about budget 2026. We are still analysing a lot of the figures, but one thing that is clear is that we have not seen an increase in the threshold for the national childcare scheme. When the scheme was introduced and the threshold was set, it was €26,000. In our pre-budget submission, we proposed that it be raised to €33,000. Those figures are not arbitrary; they are based on the poverty line calculated by Ms Rogers and her colleagues in Social Justice Ireland. We need to see an increase year on year because we see an increase in the national minimum wage. Therefore, we are faced with a situation where parents are not getting the same level of subsidy as they got when the threshold was set.

Ms Susanne Rogers:

I was going to make a similar point. Some parents this week have less access to childcare support because the national minimum wage and some of the social welfare payments went up and the income disregard and allowances have not moved with them. While the Government is giving with one hand, it is taking away with the other. That is also the case for child maintenance, as Ms Bayliss mentioned. The Department of Social Protection made allowances for that but the childcare scheme did not. It will not have an impact on child poverty if the Government does not work together and the different Departments do not collaborate.

Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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That is an important point, as is the fact that the fee adjustment last year had a knock-on impact when the universal subsidies were increased, but then the adjustment was brought in, and it had a negative knock-on effect on income-assessed subsidies. I am not sure that got the attention it required, but I hear what the witnesses are saying today and it is essential that it be taken on board in a serious way.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for all the work they did in preparing for today and for their opening statements. I have a few questions for different witnesses. I will continue on the matter of childcare.

Capacity is just as important as cost, if not more important at this point. Reducing costs is well and good but if people cannot get a place, it is no good to them. Neither of the two is at all relevant if we do not look at early years educators and school-age care practitioners because if we do not hold the professionals in the sector, we do not need to worry about cost or capacity as we will have no sector at all. The pay element is therefore important and it is concerning not to see a ring-fenced figure in black and white in the budget for our educators. I think it will cause more of them to leave the sector. The turnover figure was mentioned. In some counties, the turnover figure is 30%, 40% or just over 50%. It is alarming.

On capacity, I was taken aback by what was announced in the budget, which was the creation of 2,300 places when we need more than 50,000. The Government will use building blocks grants for extensions to schools and community centres. I found that to be the most baffling of all. Schools cannot get the buildings they need. Is there any agreement with the Department of education for extensions or with community centres? I found it bizarre. I would like to hear particularly from Ms Heeney and Ms McArdle about capacity and what was announced yesterday in the budget. What do they think that will mean for capacity in the weeks and months ahead?

Ms Teresa Heeney:

The building blocks grant is made available to existing services. One of the concerns we have about that is that it will not address what we call childcare deserts. There are childcare deserts throughout the country. There are particular patches in Dublin, but they are in many rural areas as well. We definitely need a different model so greenfield sites can be targeted and children from vulnerable families have access to high-quality settings. The issue is that improved affordability increases demand, which is having a big impact on capacity challenges.

The other thing that is important - we feel it is a bit of an elephant in the room, and we have felt this every year for the past few budgets - relates to the announcement of an additional 1,700 SNAs. The Department of education published a report last year that told us that 38% of the SNA workforce is qualified in early years education. It is not an arbitrary statement lacking evidence that many of the people who work and train in early years education are not even working in early years education. They are going straight to work as SNAs. Many of them are well qualified and well placed, but we end up with a huge problem. They are going to SNA roles because of the terms and conditions of employment. They enjoy better terms and conditions and can have a professional life.

Affordability leads to demand and challenges in capacity, but if we do not have a ring-fenced approach to targeting areas of particular disadvantage that are childcare deserts, we will have this ongoing problem with no way to remedy it.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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What is Ms Heeney's view on the proposed 2,300 places and extensions to schools and community centres?

Ms Teresa Heeney:

At the moment, the reality is that a lot of early years settings in schools - there is a growth in settings in schools - are vulnerable to the creation of additional needs classes in schools, because in the Department of Education and Youth's circular early years is not deemed to be education. Therefore, the school has no choice but to ask the early years settings to leave the premises and find a new space, which is often almost impossible, because they are in areas of growth and there are just no places. We could give the committee example after example of services that have been asked to leave school premises and cannot find alternative accommodation. The place is then lost to the community.

Until early years education is a right and available on a legislative basis, the Department of Education and Youth is entitled to say it cannot be on the school premises or another community premises. There are many commitments in the First 5 strategy - we always welcome it; it is a good policy document - but we need to decide to prioritise some of the more systemic or system-building commitments in it and invest in those.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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My next question is for Ms Bayliss and Ms Kiernan. They will be aware I have a great interest in child maintenance. I published details of a service we could copy. It is in place in the North and ensures child maintenance is paid through whatever mechanism. It has been proved and research shows that where child maintenance is paid, it can play a role in lifting children out of poverty. I worked with the former Minister for Social Protection to get the means test and all that fixed up and that was welcome, but it is regrettable it has not taken place cross-departmentally, especially in housing, childcare and elsewhere. Has any movement been made to ensure child maintenance is not included as income in any of these other Departments?

Ms Louise Bayliss:

No, not at the moment. In fact, one of the places that this is constantly raised is with the Minister for housing because that is really an area where child maintenance is used, in that it is being assessed as means. People are paying €500 or €600 towards a top-up to a landlord because their child maintenance is taken into account and, in many cases, it is not paid. We know that situation leads to homelessness because people fall into rent arrears due to of maintenance. It is a massive issue for us. In January 2024, the then Department of Justice did a report but its recommendations have not been implemented. We know that, where Revenue takes control, which it does with the local property tax, there is compliance. The report contains a recommendation that Revenue would take maintenance. I am not sure what the delay is because we are coming up on two years without the recommendation having been answered.

Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank all the witnesses for their presence and submissions. My first questions are for Ms Bayliss. I would like her views on a couple of specific things in the budget. The cost of disability grant was omitted from the budget but we all know that there is an additional cost to families. Does Ms Bayliss believe that the budget was a missed opportunity? Was there anything that counteracted it and what are her views on that?

On child benefit, the increases are welcome. Would Bayliss have advocated for increases or the two-tier system that was floated previously?

Ms Louise Bayliss:

The cost of disability was very much a missed opportunity. We had assumed, from all the talk, that the €55 or some payment would go towards addressing the cost of disability, so it was really disappointing when that was not paid. Last year, some of the systemic failures of the social protection system were masked through the one-off payments of energy credits and the €400 living alone allowance. We know that poverty and deprivation would have risen if those payments had not been made. Now, we face a situation where the €10 core rate increase, though welcome and will help address things, does not keep pace with what is needed. We have said that, in our estimation through the minimum essential standard of living, MESL, research, a minimum of €11 was required just to restore purchasing power to 2020 levels. We know that energy and food costs are getting worse and people who have less disposable income are having to spend more on food and energy. The situation is really worrying. Therefore, we anticipate a lot more deprivation and poverty coming into place. I think the Committee on Budgetary Oversight has highlighted that as well.

It is similar for most people in terms of social protection, but in the case of people with disabilities, they have a consistent deprivation rate of 19%. They face income losses next year of between €1,200 and €1,400. That is worrying when they already face such deprivation and consistent poverty. Yes, it is a massive loss.

The child support payment is really welcome. It is targeted. The idea of getting €16 a week for children over 12 years is welcome. It is good to acknowledge the higher cost in terms of teenage children because the MESL research shows that only 64% of a teenager's needs are met through social protection. Social protection is not just the qualified child or the CSP. The calculation includes the medical card and the back to school clothing and footwear allowance. It includes everything. To think that only 64% of the needs of teenagers is met is good.

The two-tier child benefit seems good in that it would step away from cliff edges where people lose money. The problem with that is, if members read through the ESRI reports and the work and tax strategy paper, they highlight that while 40,000 children would be lifted out of poverty at a cost of around €772 million, 100,000 children would lose income. Those findings worry us because some of those children are in the lowest three income deciles. Until the Department of Social Protection can research who those children are, we would be nervous about making any change and putting such investment in if it negatively impacted on some of those children living in poverty.

I would also point out that the ESRI report does not take into account the higher cost of older children compared with young children. That means people would be getting the same money whether they have a ten-year-old, a 12-year-old or an 18-year-old. That needs to be taken into account.

Dr. Naomi Feely:

I wish to add the following. There are more one-parent families where someone has a disability than two-parent families. So there is an intersectionality. We know that the poorest households in Ireland are lone parents and families where someone has a disability. Therefore, something focused is required. The lack of the income disregard rising is impacting those families and households more. As Ms Bayliss said, the increase in the child support payment is very welcome but it is being undermined by other things not keeping up and by people losing access to the childcare scheme, medical cards or other things. The Government gives with one hand and somebody else, even another part of the same Department, takes away with the other. Unfortunately, that happens repeatedly and is due to a lack of focused, joined-up thinking and poverty proofing when budget decisions are being made.

Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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The submission made by Dr. Feely contained a lot about the DEIS plan and the DEIS plus scheme that were being developed. Does she anticipate being quite heavily involved in discussions with the Department? Would the alliance like to be involved in discussions? I am sometimes baffled by the current DEIS scheme. Recently, I met a school principal in Oldcastle in my constituency. The primary school feeds into the secondary school and one is DEIS while the other is not. He could show me the names, so the information was not really anecdotal. Does Dr. Feely expect the alliance to be involved and would it like to be involved?

Regarding the statistics, 40% of young people from a lower socioeconomic background, versus 60%, go on to further education. How could this be addressed? Is it down to more scholarships? What can we do?

Dr. Naomi Feely:

My colleague, Dr. O'Reilly, will answer those questions.

Dr. Siobhán O'Reilly:

In respect of our involvement, we have attended the advisory group to design DEIS plus and contributed to the thinking that is happening on that. Departmental officials attended our end child poverty week education day, which we held in St. Ultan's school in Cherry Orchard, which is a fantastic example of how DEIS plus could look. Notwithstanding that, the school probably needs more resourcing. One is talking about a wraparound approach to care and education where the child is at the centre and the needs of the child and the family in terms of educational outcomes, and what can address those in the best way possible, are looked at.

On the DEIS identification model, the OECD report identified that further work was required. There were some changes from 2017 to 2022 in terms of how schools were identified for DEIS. We would also say that there are some children attending schools without DEIS status who require DEIS-type supports. Therefore, we need to examine how we allocate the resource. The OECD report flags that. The Department seems to be using the report to underpin its policy going forward, so there are some positive things there.

On the transfer to further and higher education and speaking as an education person, I would say that people in this country are obsessed with the attainment of third level education. We really need to focus on identifying the positive routes for each young person and his or her choices and ensuring that our education system supports that. I think senior cycle redevelopment is a really good opportunity to do that. They are looking at pathways, broadening skills within senior cycle and giving an all-round experience, not just one targeted towards the leaving certificate.

Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I invite Deputy Dempsey to take the Chair and make her declaration.

Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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I wish to make the following declaration:

I do solemnly declare that I will duly and faithfully and to the best of my knowledge and ability execute the position of Leas-Chathaoirleach, without fear or favour, apply the rules as laid down by the House, and in an impartial and fair manner, maintain order and uphold the rights and privileges of members in accordance with the Constitution and Standing Orders of Dáil Éireann.

I call Senator Murphy O'Mahony.

Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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The ladies are very welcome. I thank them for taking time out of their very busy schedules to come in here, for the work they obviously put into their opening statements as well as the work they do in general. They are all fantastic and their organisations are brilliant.

In the limited time I have, I intend to put a question to each group. I ask them to be conscious that they might only have a minute or two to answer. I will start with the National One Parent Family Alliance. Given the sharp rise in poverty among one-parent families, what specific policy changes do Ms Kiernan or Ms Bayliss believe would have the most immediate impact on reversing this trend? I emphasise immediate rather than long-term impact.

Ms Louise Bayliss:

There are a couple of things. One of the major things would be for jobseeker's transition to be extended to when a child leaves second level education, because we see a big drop in income for parents when their children turn 14 years of age and they lose access to jobseeker's transition. We feel there is no need for that if they are already in work or training, so we assume they could keep that.

Another major thing we have asked for for a long time, and which I highlighted earlier, has to do with how lone parents are the only group that have a long-term payment but do not get the living alone allowance. We have already talked about how their income is supplementing deficits in their child rate and how, on top of that, they do not get the living alone allowance. That is causing a massive strain on parents. If someone has a disability or is a pensioner, it is recognised that he or she cannot run a household on one social welfare payment, but lone parents are expected to do that, so that would be a massive change.

One of the things we see so often is that so many lone parents do not get maintenance or they have court-ordered maintenance. They are going into court looking for the child maintenance and not being supported with that. At the same time, they are being brought to court because they have not paid a TV licence. We see all the time that women are going to court because of TV licences. It is because they cannot afford it. They do not get the household benefits package that would provide the TV licence. These simple measures, including the living alone allowance so that they would not be supplementing deficits elsewhere, would be the two things off the top of my head. Ms Kiernan may have something.

Ms Karen Kiernan:

That is fine.

Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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I thank Ms Bayliss. Turning to ECI, how would aligning early years educators' pay and conditions with public sector standards improve its service delivery and reduce child poverty?

Ms Teresa Heeney:

Currently, there is nothing in terms of pay and conditions to encourage people to work in the early years sector. Large numbers of the early years workforce are trained and qualified to the same level as their primary school counterparts. To signal a date by which that workforce will be included in public sector pay and conditions would have a transformative effect because it would immediately give a signal to people who were training in and qualified in early years to stay and work in the sector. That workforce is the key indicator of a quality service. We would couple that with an extension of equal start. The discussion earlier about DEIS was very important, because when the equal start model was developed, it learned a lot from DEIS. That is why it has taken a different approach. The equal start model identifies where each child is in the setting as opposed to the geographical way in the original DEIS programme. We hear from our members about how beneficial equal start has been in services because the workforce has time to engage and build relationships with families, which is very impactful when it comes to retaining those children in settings. Pay parity would give a signal of hope and professionalism to the early years workforce, whose members would then be able to implement in a very professional way the equal start model.

Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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I thank Ms Heeney for that. Moving to the Children's Rights Alliance, how does Dr. Feely or Dr. O'Reilly feel the DEIS plus programme should be structured to effectively address intergenerational trauma and poverty in schools?

Dr. Siobhán O'Reilly:

We are advocating that priority be given to multidisciplinary teams working in and around schools. These are models that are in other countries and work very well. They are context specific. Each community might need something different in terms of the composition of those teams. Some communities might initially need family outreach workers or family support workers to do the preliminary work to engage the child and the family in collaboration with the school. It is like a team working around the child. Then it is about looking at what services are required. Is it someone to go out and collect the child for school, is attendance an issue or does Mam need support with something? It is that relational piece Ms Heeney was talking about that works really effectively. I mentioned St. Ultan’s school in Cherry Orchard. There are community-based services that are doing some of that already, so there are models we could look at. For us, the most important thing is to prioritise those in order that the educators can focus on literacy and numeracy, which is the other part of the DEIS plan, to make sure they are engaged.

Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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I thank Dr. O'Reilly. Turning to Social Justice Ireland, how does Ms Rogers think the child poverty and well-being programme office should be structured to ensure long-term strategic impact? I mean as opposed to short-term fixes, which I do not agree with.

Ms Susanne Rogers:

This is unfortunately very short term, by nature. None of the decisions we see anywhere across the Government or policy are looking at what Ireland should look like in 2040, 2050 or 2060. We were led to believe that this was going to be a child poverty budget, but apart from the qualified child payment, which was mentioned, there was really nothing in it for low-income families. This is an issue of long-term commitment to public or social housing. That is key. If we are not prepared to put income into people's pockets, we are going to have to reduce the cost of housing, education and transport. The office is really welcome because it is cross-departmental and looking at all of those things, but it has to be long term. To pick up on points made earlier about the budget, it was being framed as a starting point and the first of many, but this is not the first time a Government has done a budget. This is not a starting point. This is not the first of five but another budget that is really only looking at short-term solutions for what are long-term problems.

We would like to see more ambition. Some of the difficult decisions that need to be made about housing, income and social welfare are not going to be popular, but in the long term, these are investments that need to be put in place now in order to reap the benefits. What we see with social protection is if the Department thinks it is making a saving, those costs are just borne somewhere else in the system and we can really see that. There is €2 billion going to the housing assistance payment and rent supplement and €1.7 billion going into emergency accommodation for IPAS. Long-term commitment and long-term thinking are definitely needed.

Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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I thank Ms Rogers.

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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I thank the witnesses for coming in. I really appreciate it, as well as the work they do on the care of our children.

Obviously, the budget did not go far enough with regard to child poverty. It is a missed opportunity, once again, by the Government to look after the households that are most vulnerable.

I have a couple of questions about the future of in kind versus cash supports. What are the organisations' positions on the in kind model of supports as opposed to cash payments when it come to helping disadvantaged families and children? Will they briefly outline any research and findings if they have any information on that?

Social Justice Ireland's submission focused on recommendations regarding State aid and supports to counter child poverty. What is the organisation's position on conditional housing supports tied to child welfare indicators such as school attendance or health check compliance? What alternative accountability mechanisms would the representatives propose?

The equal start funding is limited. Will the witnesses outline briefly what criteria their organisations believe should be used to designate priority settings and how would they ensure transparency in that process?

The Children's Rights Alliance proposed wraparound supports in early years settings. How would its representatives evaluate the effectiveness of these supports in improving child development outcomes? More importantly, what metrics would they use for ongoing monitoring and evaluation of such supports?

Have the witnesses conducted any research to explore how parental engagement or lack thereof is influencing child protection outcomes or whether current supports sufficiently empower parents to take responsibility? They have plenty of time to answer those questions.

Ms Susanne Rogers:

On conditionality, that links to accountability and so on and relates to the questions of how much State interference there should be in the family. To date, we have removed ourselves from that. We were talking about the conditionality, and, as the Senator said, there is a question of “We will provide social housing supports if you meet the following criteria.” Is it a case, as the Senator said, that it could be if you send your child to school, if you meet the district nurse and so on?

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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It is, really, or not necessarily. What mechanisms can the State use for better outcomes for children who may come from disadvantaged backgrounds?

Ms Susanne Rogers:

It is definitely the case that access to secure, stable and affordable housing is key because that puts a bedrock under it. Adequate incomes are key. There is almost a tone of punishment involved or an idea of how we think people should be living their lives. In other words, if they meet particular criteria, they will get certain bits and pieces. I would not be a fan of conditionality being put in place for access to social housing or-----

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Maybe we would not have the outcomes we have had in relation to certain children who have been missing for a number of years. They have not had very good outcomes either as a result of that. This is about how the State can stop something like that happening again by means of regular welfare checks, health checks, school attendance checks, etc. What is the witnesses' position on that?

Ms Susanne Rogers:

Those supports should be in place for every family in the country. If a household is struggling, and I do not know how many people in this room are parents but it is not easy-----

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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We are all parents.

Ms Susanne Rogers:

If you are parenting alone, it is very difficult.

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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It is very tough. Absolutely.

Ms Susanne Rogers:

I do not think a household needs to even look for it, it should be available through the system. We keep talking about vulnerable families, but all families will require support in some shape or form. I am conscious that the time is running down and that there were a lot of questions there for other colleagues.

Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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We might move-----

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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There are two minutes remaining.

Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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We will go around to the various the witnesses, if that is okay.

Ms Karen Kiernan:

As well as being chair of the National One Parent Family Alliance, I am also CEO of One Family. We have been delivering a range of family supports to people around the country for 50 years. It is absolutely proven in research that a positive strengths-based approach to family support and parenting support is what works. Some countries in Europe have tried to move away from this conditional Big Brother approach to parenting because, ultimately, what you are doing is punishing children. Parents consistently do the best they can. Sometimes they fail and need State supports to help them. We do not always have those available in Ireland. Many people are dealing with childhood trauma, abuse in their childhood and ongoing domestic violence and abuse. There are many issues. They are not all poverty related; some are, but some very high-income families also engage in abusive behaviours towards children. What we need to do as a country is adopt a strengths-based approach to supporting children and their parents.

Ms Teresa Heeney:

I will give some immediate responses to the Senator’s questions. On being able to target areas, and I mentioned childcare deserts earlier, the Pobal deprivation index provides a great deal of information which, I imagine, the forward-planning unit in the Department of children is using in order to target new services and make sure that children in disadvantage have access to those services. Unfortunately, affordability was not addressed in yesterday’s budget. That continues to be an issue for families. I will speak a little about attendance rules. We hear from a lot of our members who run services that the attendance rules for the NCS can be very problematic for some families in circumstances where parental capacity is a challenge, families that are in unstable housing conditions or there are disability issues and there are hospital appointments. That poses a financial impact for families and for services because there are stringent attendance rules. We would encourage the Department to review those rules in order that those families are not discriminated against.

Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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We will have a second opportunity for members. I thank the Senator. I now call Senator Cosgrove.

Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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The witnesses are very welcome. I thank them all for their statements. Ms Bayliss mentioned the Parliamentary Budget Office. The outlook is not looking good if the Parliamentary Budget Office is saying that a rise in income poverty is evident for the elderly, increasing from 13.3% in 2024. Child poverty also rose from 15.3% in 2024 to a forecasted 16.1%. I want to ask Ms Bayliss about pay, because she brought that up. An opportunity was missed by the Government in that it did not move to a living wage as recommended. We can see people on minimum wage. Ms Bayliss spoke about people working in hospitality and low-pay sectors. Some 200,000 people will be €600 worse off because of this budget. Ms Bayliss spoke about how single-parent families’ access to childcare is a big problem. Childminders are not included in the national childare scheme. How can we change that or increase eligibility in order that childminders can be included? Is it too cumbersome? Is it because they have to be registered with Tusla? Why is the take-up so low?

Ms Louise Bayliss:

The registration has impact because you have to go through Tusla. As we know, there are only 87 childminders in the whole country. More than 87 became millionaires by winning the lotto. Your chances of getting a childminder are probably less than your chances of winning the lotto. It is not really a viable option. Many lone parents are working in hospitality, retail or care sectors and they are excluded from the national childcare scheme. However, I would add, as my colleague Ms Kiernen mentioned, that it is also about income thresholds for the working family payment and the one-parent family allowance. When that was introduced in 1997 there was no national minimum wage. The first national minimum wage came in in 2000. At that stage, the income disregard for the one-parent family allowance was set at €147.50, which equated to 26.23 hours. If we look today, it is now 12.22 hours. That is going to reduce further to 11.66 hours. What that means in real terms is that previously a lone parent could work 26 hours while her child was at school and keep her full social welfare payment now that same lone parent is working 11 hours. After 11 hours, half of what she earns is being taken off her social welfare payment. That is a regressive step. Something like that, coupled with a living wage, would make a real difference. As I said, faster registration of child minders to allow lone parents who are in non-traditional nine-to-five jobs to get access to that payment would be significant.

Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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Am I also right in thinking that education is included in the entitlement of hours to work? That is wrong, in my opinion. People are trying to better themselves and get an education, but that is included as working. There is definitely an issue about the amount of work involved.

Ms Louise Bayliss:

No. They can work whatever hours they want. It is around the social welfare payment.

Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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That is what I mean.

Ms Louise Bayliss:

It is based on income rather than hours.

Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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Okay.

Ms Karen Kiernan:

The Senator might be thinking of availability for work. If you are in education you may not be available for work.

Ms Susanne Rogers:

Conditional payment.

Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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Is it really hard to get the equal start programme? If we know it works, why is there a lack of investment in it?

Ms Teresa Heeney:

Services are invited to participate in equal start on the basis of the children who attend the service.

It is a good model. There are a number of tiers. It needs to be expanded and made available to more services. We certainly hear from our members that its impact is very meaningful. They have staff hours to engage with families who may be new in communities. That is particularly important in order that such families can feel a sense of belonging in those communities. There is no doubt that it is a powerful model. If there were a legislative basis for early years, then the equal start programme would be applied probably in a more universal way across all services because all services have some children who could benefit from a model like it.

Dr. Naomi Feely:

We held a recent event as part of End Child Poverty Week where some of our members said that equal start funding has allowed them to break even, which is really important. In the run-up to budget 2026, we wanted to see a ramping up of investment in equal start. It is really critical that funding is increased because it can have an impact. Based on the figures we have seen to date, the increase in funding for the next programme year of equal start equates to an additional €3 million or €4 million. It needs to be significantly higher than that.

Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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The services I know think it is an amazing programme that works. With regard to the building blocks programme, from listening to people working in the sector, is that funding notoriously hard to get? It is a good idea that money is put towards community centres, but I understand there are areas that have nothing. What did Ms Heeney refer to them as?

Ms Teresa Heeney:

Deserts.

Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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Is it a laborious application to get funding? Basically, is the process too hard for services?

Ms Teresa Heeney:

It perhaps could be a rolling window. The window for applications is often very short. As the Senator knows, it can take a lot of blocks to be in place before a service might be ready to make an application. It is useful that the programme is available to all services, rather than to just one type of service, because in some more rural towns there is only one operator. It might be a community operator or a small private concern that operates almost like a community service. It is important we develop a scheme to which brand new services can also apply because such a scheme does not currently exist. To take Boyle as an example, on “Morning Ireland” last week we heard an article about Boyle having no service. That service needs to be able to find funding.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach agus na finnéithe go léir. Tá brón orm as a bheith mall ach bhí mé ag éisteacht leo, although that is the promise everyone makes. In this case, I actually was. The witnesses have dealt with a comprehensive set of issues. We were talking about child poverty and deprivation. This is almost a forever conversation. We have not actually got anywhere. We have never actually looked at this and had a proper conversation about addressing it. Multiple issues will be brought up, specifically regarding the budget. Many have said it is just a failure to deal with measures, such as the cost of disability payment. Most advocates said that at least there was the one-off payment last year and a recognition of that added cost of living. That is almost forgotten now. We then wait for a task force, a network and the usual things where issues go to die in this place.

We have had no shortage of issues with child protection. When Ms Tanya Ward was before this committee, she highlighted the issue – it is a big one I have always had – that we need a proper screening scenario to catch those who are most vulnerable. I do not mean that the first step will be Tusla jumping in to take children. Rather, it is about supports being in place around the family to give them the support they require. We will then get best-case results afterwards. Ms Ward spoke about the plan – I have not received great answers to my parliamentary questions in this regard, but it is something I will chase up – relating to specialist public health nurses and the idea of screening. What is the best framework we can put in place in that regard?

We are talking about early learning, schools and having all the proper supports in place. Corpus Christi Primary School, Moyross and St. James’s Primary School, Dublin, came before the disability committee to discuss the idea of those added supports that outlier principals and staff have obtained. It was about having everything available, from disability services right through to psychological services, meeting kids where they are at in order to catch some of those issues and then involve the family and whatever else. There is also a need for far greater bespoke supports for certain families. It is about ensuring all this follows coherently, rather than what we have in place currently. We just operate in silos. CAMHS is doing one thing and the CDNTs are doing another, while Tusla is doing something else. While a lot of people are doing good work, none of it is joined together. There is no proper framework to catch the really bad scenarios. Providing general supports in order that a person does not fall will lead us to a better place. It is about improving everyone’s life. It is also about education and transitioning to employment. That will break poverty in a real way. The witnesses have just under four minutes to answer how we put the perfect framework in play. We will go round the room.

Dr. Naomi Feely:

The last time we spoke to the committee, we referred to the dedicated PHN service. From looking at the data on public health nurses throughout the country, we know there is a geographic disparity when it comes to the checks children are getting. It is critical that we have that dedicated PHN service. That would mean there are eyes on children. GPs will say that PHNs are the eyes and ears on the ground. They see what is happening.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I am assuming the specialist undertakes a screening-type training or whatever.

Dr. Naomi Feely:

It is about having this dedicated service focused on children and families. That will be critical, particularly in areas of deprivation. Alongside that, we also need to promote home visiting. Good economic analysis of home visiting has been carried out that shows a good return on investment. The figures are contained in the Child Poverty Monitor. I do not want to get them wrong. I can follow up with the Deputy on those figures. Alongside those services, the supports provided through the full roll-out of the equal start programme will be critical. As my colleague Dr. O’Reilly stated in terms of the DEIS plus model, we will also see those wraparound supports in the school so we know that children will be interacting with a number of different trusted adults.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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It will be quicker and better.

Dr. Siobhán O'Reilly:

How we do it is important. As the Deputy described, we tend to separate parts of the child and put them out to different services. That is not working, and a lot of reports have identified that. There is a need for that co-ordination piece in the community that can wrap around a child. Most children will respond well to the PHN check and most parents will engage well with that service. It is about what happens when that does not happen. How are we supporting in that regard? It links to Senator Keoghan’s question about how we support parents to trust and engage with the services.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Buy-in is needed. Do not get me wrong; there will always be a need for nuclear action as well. We all accept that.

Ms Teresa Heeney:

It is important to recognise the protective value of early years services in the same way that we recognise the protective value of schools. Reports are being undertaken now regarding the fact that early years services and schools were closed during Covid-19. Approximately 97% of children attend early years services when they are two years and eight months old. The State has eyes on most children at an early stage. The beauty of the ECCE scheme is that it is universal. This comes back again to the question of placing ECCE on a legislative basis. If ECCE was on a legislative basis, we would know that children are attending services. They would have a right to attend a high-quality service. That would allow the State to be more protective of all children from as early as two years and eight months. Many children would be younger than that, as we know. That idea of wraparound supports has been conceived and considered in the first five strategy, which proposes that services would behave as neighbourhood hubs where those wraparound supports would be available.

Policy has considered this and been accepted, but it is about investment and having a vision. To go back to Dr. Feely's point about home visiting, we hear from our members that Equal Start has allowed them to visit children at home so that parents can hear in a very safe environment about what goes on in the service. That is particularly important for newcomer families who do not speak English as a first language. We really want to see those children in services.

Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Ms Heeney. All members have now had their opportunity to speak. If anyone would like to indicate, we will give five minutes per speaker. Is there anyone else? I call on Senator Keogan.

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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I have a question for the Children’s Rights Alliance. We were here in June discussing child protection and alternative care, which has enormous relevance to the broader discussion we are having today. Dr. Feely’s colleague is not here today but she was beginning to consult with the CRA’s membership about their experience of child protection, good practice and what the current gaps and difficulties are. Will she share with us how this consultation is progressing and let us know what the plan to do with it is? Does the CRA have a timeline for sharing it with us, along with the findings and recommendations? If Dr. Feely is willing to share some of those initial findings, I am sure the people here today would be interested in them.

Dr. Naomi Feely:

I might pick up on a point the Senator asked earlier after clarifying the process on child protection. We are undertaking that work. We have not yet gone out to field work. We are looking at setting up an advisory group that will oversee it, which will include members of the Children's Rights Alliance. I envisage that work will take place over quarter 4 of 2025. As soon as we have those findings, we will be very happy to share them, because they will be critical to capturing that evidence base of what is happening on the ground.

Senator Keogan made a point earlier on about the in-kind benefits, which I will briefly respond to. It was an important point. From the perspective of the Children’s Rights Alliance, one thing we have noticed over the past number of years is a growing concern around food poverty. We have been really lucky. Through a number of donations, we have distributed €1 million in funding to support organisations, our members on the ground and families and children with direct food costs. This means providing them with supermarket vouchers or even hampers of food. That is a critical concern.

In budget 2026, we see no expansion of the hot school meals scheme. We have seen a very welcome development from the Department of Health in that it will provide additional environmental health officers to inspect the nutrition level of hot school meals in primary schools. However, one real concern for us is that the Government funded a holiday-hunger pilot programme this past summer, and there is no additional funding to support that next summer. We are very concerned about this because those in-kind supports are really beneficial. They put money back into the pockets of parents. The MESL data really shows that, in particular, the previous Government was very successful in expanding free school books to all pupils.

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Would anybody else like to comment on that? There is a key question about in-kind supports rather than cash supports.

Ms Susanne Rogers:

Until there are in-kind supports, cash supports will be vital. If we look at the housing system, until housing is fixed, we are going to have to put money back into people’s pockets. Basic services such as school supports should be accessible throughout the system. We are looking at how fuel payments are done but until those services are in place, cash supports are vital.

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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How does that get to the child? Dr. Feely referred to hampers, food and food hubs.

Ms Susanne Rogers:

At the child poverty summit, somebody on stage said a child needs one good adult. The adult also needs one good adult. What we are talking about—--

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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In the context of the one good adult, how do we get parents to behave and to engage?

Ms Susanne Rogers:

I do not know if I like the word "behave"-----

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Not to behave but to engage.

Ms Susanne Rogers:

Looking at parenting supports is probably the key. Dr. Feely touched on the fact that high-income families can parent primarily in private. They do not have to go through these hoops. I do not want to confuse parenting while poor with poor parenting. They are generally very different things. This is really a case of providing community spaces and access to budgeting, nutritional, physical and mental health supports, as well as adult, digital and media literacy supports, and putting all of those things in place for the adult. To go back to Super Nanny, she always changed the parents' behaviour, never the child's. Maybe this is not actually a conversation about child poverty looking - I should not say this - at the child; it is about looking at the family and what family supports are needed. That runs the gamut. Until, as was said, a parent can feel secure that they are not going to lose their home because they use HAP, their income is going to cover seven dinners and they can pay for the school trip or the swimming, this is how it is going to be.

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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I thank Ms Rogers.

Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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I call on Senator Cosgrave.

Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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I am not going to be long at all. It must be so frustrating for the witnesses coming in here. This is my first time sitting on this committee, and things do not change. In fact, it seems from the budget that things are getting worse. If the right to flexible work or the right to work from home was in legislation, would that have a huge impact?

My second question continues on what Senator Keogan said about the evidential impact that having a second tier of child benefit would have. In regard to the family visitor programme within Lifestart, is that an area that would work with the Equal Start programme? I know they are different programmes but they are in the house. Wages and the retention and recruitment of staff are a huge issue as well because of the low wages. I would appreciate comments on that. The second tier of child benefit is a missed opportunity.

Ms Louise Bayliss:

If we look at the ESRI report and the working tax strategy, there are concerns there. While 40,000 children will be lifted out of poverty, 100,000 children will lose income. Some of them are people who would be getting the child support payment rate because they have carers and would not qualify on income for that, but many of the people who will lose money are children in the three lower income deciles and that is worrying because we know they are facing poverty already. Some of them will lose up to 16% of their income, based on the ESRI report. Any investment that costs €772 million should be clearly justified by evidence. We need to ensure no child is worse off. We need to get that reassurance and the programme should be adapted to make sure those loopholes do not exist. I would love to see €772 million invested in child income supports but not necessarily in the second tier benefit if it means that some children are going to lose out. The MESL report clearly shows that social protection covers 113% of babies' needs, 115% of preschool needs, 88% of primary school needs and only 64% at second level. The recommendation for the second tier is that people get the same regardless of the age of the child, and that is contrary to what we know the needs of the child are. Those are my concerns around that.

Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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I thank Ms Bayliss.

Ms Teresa Heeney:

I will make a brief point on equal start and access. If we acknowledge that access to good-quality early years services has a protective role in the lives of children, it is important that we recognise that the Government has said it anticipates a total shortfall by 2030, in only five years’ time, of approximately 14,000 early years places for children under the age of five. We really need to see a huge ramp-up of all of the schemes we are talking about if we want to deliver on the needs of children under the age of five by 2030. However, there is no point in building the places unless we have the staff.

We have plenty of people coming out of early years courses - level 5, level 6, level 7, level 8 courses - every year but we are not recruiting them to work in the sector, so they are leaving courses but we cannot convert them to work in services. That is why we are saying we have to signal to that workforce that this is a sector they should consider joining. They are absolutely voting with their feet at the moment.

Dr. Siobhán O'Reilly:

May I come in on the feeling of nothing changing? To go back to Ms Heeney's point about learning, there has been learning within the system around DEIS. Ms Heeney spoke about how we had an identification model that looked purely at deprivation scores and not at children's needs. When we are looking at identification models going forward, they need to be led by children's needs. It can be frustrating, and maybe it is slower than we would like, but there is learning happening in the system.

Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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I call on Deputy Ó Murchú.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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It is a follow-on to what I said earlier. The front bench of witnesses did not get an opportunity to come back in. It was about something Ms Rogers had said earlier. I get it: there is very obvious stuff the witnesses can do. The housing crisis impacts everyone. It is an absolute disaster. People who do not have money do not have the opportunity to always make good decisions. At times there is a poverty trap and there is even a social welfare trap where people who might attempt to get out of it are afraid of losing benefits or afraid of something changing in relation to being able to avail of HAP and so on. It is a very inflexible system that does not suit the world we live in. Ms Heeney got it right in the sense that we have always had pilots and schemes that work but we just never expand them properly. We never ensure we have the throughput of a workforce to ensure that happens. As I said, I get it: there will be a huge number of issues across all families and all socioeconomic groups. However, when you are dealing with areas of poverty and deprivation you are also dealing with intergenerational trauma. That is made worse by poverty and lack of choice. Then there is the major issue of drugs and addiction, which just compounds it. We talk about one good adult. We have all known families where previously there would have been the good granny. That no longer exists. We need a huge level of supports to deal with this. If we do not do it, we will be having this conversation forever. The improvements we can provide to society in general, to people's lives, are phenomenal. If we get this right - I remember somebody saying this even of addiction services - fewer supports might be needed into the future, but if we never tackle it we will be dealing with it and paying for it forever.

Ms Karen Kiernan:

I wish to respond and roll in a response to the last question, if that is okay. If we really want to improve child protection and services for children, first of all we need to make sure those children and their parents have a roof over their heads, enough income and all the basic, bottom-line things we need to survive. We also need to make sure that we live in a more equal society where people are not stigmatised because they are parenting on their own, because they are poor, because they are from a certain place or because they are an ethnic minority because that impacts their ability to do well.

The big answer is integrated services. The committee has heard today about how people's incomes are being affected this week simply because we have not got appropriate integration. The same is true from the point of view of service provision. It is completely patchy depending on whether you have a PHN at all, whether they are good and then whether you have a family resource centre - whatever is in your area.

As regards countries that do this well, Sweden certainly used to do it well. Everyone who is pregnant, whether with their first or fifth child, goes on a parenting course. The records for them, their family and their children travel from prenatal right through the schools and education. Talk about eyes-on. There is a completely holistic administrative system built around individuals and families. They are so supportive of parental leave. They have a very strong gender equality approach for fathers as well as mothers, whereas when we introduced the parental leave equality piece here, lone parents, unfortunately, got half the leave that two-parent families have. We have still not rectified that three or four years in. There are ways of doing this well but it requires investment and a reorientation to understand that poor children live in poor families and if you want to support children the single most impactful way is to support their parents to do their best.

Ms Susanne Rogers:

The Deputy has touched on it. I have heard it described before as a choiceless choice. As was said, it could be a matter of your income, or all these barriers could be in place. It is a matter of using words like "behaviour". If there is only one option or no options available to you-----

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Only bad choices.

Ms Susanne Rogers:

From the outside it looks like a bad choice. It looks like "Why would you do that? I would never do that. Of course I would not. I do not need to do that." It is about all those supports. Even when you are talking about trying to get people to work in these areas and access to social workers and getting people to work in early years, it is housing, housing, housing. How can you work, how can you go to college for three or four years, come out of it and then end up in a job that means you have to share with six other adults in a suburban house somewhere? All of that will impact all of this.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, and we sort of avoid it because we have got that used to it. It is just a constant here.

I thank all the witnesses for this. The only thing I will say-----

Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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Your last comment.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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-----is about the idea of the hub and the hub services. It is an example that was given to us yesterday. It was from Portugal, Finland and even, I think, New Brunswick, and it was an idea in relation to disability. Portugal was the example they really went into. It was the idea that you actually took out the special schools and then took the support teams and turned them into 154 teams that then dealt with all the schools. They have not needed to resource beyond that. I think that idea works, even taking disability out of it, because even within that you are providing plans and supports for all the kids and you are not even worried about assessments because everybody is getting it. It was best practice being employed by all. If we could do that and provide bespoke supports in relation to one-to-ones with certain families who would benefit greatly from it, we could avoid some of the disaster situations and circumstances that arise and we could really do something in tackling poverty and deprivation. We will be wasting our time if we do not deal with the underlying housing crisis and the fact that we have not always facilitated people into proper education and employment.

Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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Thank you, Deputy. We still have plenty of time but we might allow the witnesses to give closing remarks, if that is okay with members.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I could take about 25 minutes.

Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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We might give the witnesses five minutes each too, if that is all right. Would you like to start, Dr. Feely?

Dr. Naomi Feely:

I thank the Chair and the members. We really welcome the opportunity to be here with our colleagues to engage with them on this really important issue. For us at the Children's Rights Alliance, what is critical when we are talking about child poverty is that we look at the three-pillar approach and that we focus on access to quality services and access to adequate income. One gap we have had maybe in the discussion today is children and young people's participation. Every time we talk to children and young people, they say they want to see more green spaces, they want to be able to go to more dance classes, they want to be able to go to more of the latest gym class or whatever it is they are engaging in. That is critical as well. It is critical that we ensure that we have a national play strategy that really addresses that.

In relation to this budget and the budgets of the previous Government, on the income side I think we will see the impact of not increasing the child support payment to an adequate rate over recent budgets. However, we do have the potential to really focus on targeting income supports towards those families in the next four to five budgets of this Government. In the last programme for Government, we saw a number of successes, and those successes were because we took incremental investment over successive budgets. That is in the area of food poverty, expanding hot school meals and ensuring that children have a guarantee of a hot school meal in primary school. We expanded that over a five-year programme. We also addressed the issue of school costs by expanding provision of free school books to all children up to senior cycle. We need to approach the coming budgets with the same mindset. We cannot solve child poverty in one budget or in one year but we can make political decisions to really focus on investment across a number of areas. It is critical, though, that when we are talking about those budgets a cross-government approach is taken.

From the discussions here today, we have seen positive measures from one Department being negatively impact by another Department. For instance, it happens with the national childcare scheme threshold I mentioned earlier. We need to ensure those supports are increased by the same amount of money seen on the social protection side.

In the committee's discussions, it may have the opportunity to engage with children and young people. I know that is really challenging on the topic of child poverty. I do not know if the opportunity is there to engage with them in a private session. There is a very good participation focus in the Department of children with the Hub na nÓg. It does really excellent work. My colleague, Dr. Siobhán O'Reilly, recently had a conversation with a group of children who were talking about issues in their school and trying to identify ways we can bring that to decision making. It is really critical that the committee engages with children and young people and that it is not an adult-centred conversation. We really need to capture what they want to see happening because many of them will talk about housing. They know they or their friends are experiencing the impact of the housing situation. They will talk about play as well but that is really critical and we must think about that in a broad sense. I will leave it there and I thank the committee.

Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Dr. Feely. We will engage in a session later in the year.

Ms Teresa Heeney:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to have a very good discussion today to tease out a lot of the issues. To summarise, and I will not repeat what Dr. Feely has said, ongoing investment in equal start is really important if we want to support these children who we are speaking about today. Alongside the ongoing investment in equal start, we need to invest in affordability measures as well. As we know, all families can experience poverty at different times in their lives. We certainly recommend that the attendance rules I spoke out about earlier, which really have the capacity to negatively impact on families and particularly these families, are reviewed by Government. Not only do they create a huge administrative burden, they could lead to discrimination where services might be discouraged from including or offering places in their services to families where there are parental capacity issues, unstable housing, disability, children from the Travelling community or transport problems. We do not want that to happen, so if the attendance rules could be reviewed, that would rule out some of those issues.

As I said earlier, we need to have a plan to target the childcare deserts where children simply do not have access to places. They are not getting access to that protective early years service at a very young age. I make that point again. Most definitely, we have to take a very cold look at our workforce for early years. We have to have a plan for how will we make sure we have a professional, well-qualified workforce to work in services in five years' time because at the moment, it is very hard for services. We hear our members talk about the stresses of a Sunday when the phone rings and they need to close rooms the next day because they literally have no staff and nobody to cover the rooms. That is really not good for children who need to get into those services on a Monday morning. The idea of the workforce is not an abstract concept. It is very real because these people have a very meaningful role in the lives of children.

Ms Karen Kiernan:

The national one parent family alliance was set up in Covid because we were all so concerned as national organisations about what was specifically happening for one parent families and the children who live in them. We have kept going with a strong focus on socioeconomic issues because we know that most poor children in Ireland live in one parent families. If there was the political will and mechanism to focus on those and help lone parents be successful to move from social welfare into employment, or make work pay for those who are in low-income employment, their children will be much better off and those measures will be very impactful in reducing the national levels of child poverty.

I have a couple of points, some of which were raised and we did not get to address them. On homelessness, 58% of all homeless families in Ireland are one parent families. Generally, it is a mum with one or two young children. Month on month, that is increasing. It is a crisis. We have called it out for at least two years. There is still no HAP family homeless strategy. There is nothing in the budget. Homelessness was not mentioned. There have to be better preventative measures that could be taken to stop this number of one parent families disproportionately ending up in homelessness and those children growing up there.

Flexible working and working for home would be valuable to all parents but particularly if you are parenting on your own and you have a long commute and your childcare service may need to close suddenly, as Ms Heeney said, is not available or the parent cannot do the commute and make it all work. Of course, it is the obvious thing to do for all parents. To go back to our mantra, if you design a system that works for one parent families, no more than designing a system that works for a child with a disability, it will work for everyone else as well. Go with the people who are finding it toughest, design systems to support them and it will improve.

A lot of lone parents find it very difficult to get employment and stay in it because of childcare, no after-school care and because they may be pushed into low-earning and low-income employment, which is often out of hours and shift work. If you do not have family support as a lone parent, you are probably not working and you are probably not moving on in your career.

We are concerned that the Department of Social Protection needs to have a stronger education first approach to employment. It is possibly not the same for young people because to make it as an older person and as a parent, you may need a degree and postgraduate degree to be able to earn enough to get off income supports. There is not always that time and support built into the system. One Family has a really strong, evidence-based bridging programme, new futures. It is not funded by the State in Ireland. It is not rolled out or mainstreamed and yet, it has a 75% success rate for lone parents who participate in it. We need to see more of that.

To finish on the integrated policy planning, this has kind of been our theme for the day. One Family was fortunate to be asked to do a presentation at the recent child poverty summit that the Department of Taoiseach held. We focused our five or six minutes on a video of parents' voices and their direct experiences of the lack of integration and the challenges they were facing. We really exhorted the policymakers and politicians in the room to please do something about the systems. You can get much better value for money and you do not need extra money but you need to change how things are operating. I will end with that point. We would be very happy to send to the committee our words and the video we shared that day if that would be of help.

Ms Louise Bayliss:

I might add one further statement. I think it is something Ms Kiernan and NOPFA fully agree with. There is a vulnerability when you are depending on social protection and the fact Department of Social Protection officials are not trauma informed. Not all lone parents are domestic abuse survivors but all domestic abuse survivors with children become lone parents. That trauma is not recognised by Department of Social Protection officials and staff. There is also another thing about the financial vulnerability of lone parents. One of the things that comes up so often that we come across is where a parent goes to collect a social protection payment and we have to bear in mind that they have no financial cushion whatsoever. They could be down to their last €1 or €2. They go to the post office to collect their payment and the payment is not there. That is not recorded anywhere.

There is a fear that could happen to a parent when they go up to collect the money but it is not there. They then have to trek to the Intreo office, wherever that is, sit down and be told "Oh, we moved your payment because we wanted to get in contact with you.". I do not know about anybody else here but if my employers need to talk to me, they send me an email or call me. My salary is in my bank account, regardless of that. We need to start recognising the financial vulnerability there is. If a person goes to the post office and their payment is not there, that traumatises them for a very long time afterwards. I had to raise that point.

Ms Susanne Rogers:

We used the phrase accident of birth earlier in the room. I have probably passed through six or seven different Dublins on my way here. I imagine anybody coming in from further afield has done the same.

Ideally, all those different children from all those different parts of Dublin should, in theory, all have the same opportunities, on paper, to get an education and access to third level and to the supports they need. In reality, this is not what is happening. Going back to the budget, we did not really see it. If I recall, and I know this has gone on record and I could be wrong about it, but I think that as part of the speeches, it was framed as a child poverty budget and then there was €300 million. We would be saying that is not really a child poverty budget if it is only €300 million that will be dedicated to anything in this area. This is because it comes down to resources, housing and those family supports. Those family supports must also be really easy to access. Someone, for example, might think they are actually doing a good job of being a parent and might not consider they need help. In an informal setting, though, where we are having a chat, that person might say they do not do something or did not know something was available. The setting needs to be a little bit more informal as well so it is not a case of people thinking they are doing a bad job or someone else thinking they are doing a bad job. It is just that people are doing a job but they could probably do it better and pick up things as they go along.

We never mentioned youth work because we are obviously talking about children. If we are talking about children under the age of 18, then youth work was not in the budget at all. My favourite tool is Ctrl+F on the expenditure reports and the budget speeches. Youth work did not get a single mention. Youth is only mentioned in terms of justice, at which stage we are too late. What we see as antisocial behaviour is actually social behaviour. When we see gangs of kids and teenagers, we immediately go oh oh, but this is what young people do. I just think it was very disappointing to see no mention of youth work at all in the budget yesterday. We write amazing policy but we need to implement and resource it. We know exactly who we are talking about and where they are. We talk about hard-to-reach people and areas. I am not buying that any more. We know exactly where people are and who they are.

Just to touch on it, I am glad disability came up because we had not really covered it in our opening statement. I am referring either to children living with disabilities or living in households where somebody is disabled. Again, we know where these households are and who is in them. Again, Ctrl+F is our best friend when it comes to those expenditure reports. I thank the committee.

Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Rogers. We will all be doing that when we leave here. I thank all the witnesses for their robust statements and contributions today and, indeed, all the work they are doing to try to tackle this important issue. As Ms Rogers said, there are many different Dublins. Another message might be that we are all in multiple WhatsApp or Facebook groups. People might often not think the people next door to them or one of their friends might be struggling or reaching that poverty line. As TDs and Senators, we see in our offices that the people coming in on the brink of homelessness might not be those we once imagined it would be and this is a far-reaching topic. I again thank all the witnesses for coming in to appear before the committee. I think it was an informative engagement. We had three rounds of questioning, which is always good to see on this really important subject matter. The committee is scheduled to hold a number of meetings on this important topic with different stakeholders over the next couple of weeks before we produce a report.