Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 15 October 2025
Joint Committee on Social Protection, Rural and Community Development
Child Poverty: Discussion
2:00 am
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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Our next item on the agenda is an engagement on matters relating to child poverty with officials from the Department of Social Protection. I will now read a note on privilege and housekeeping matters before I begin. Witnesses and members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make any charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that would be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity.
Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such directions as I might make.
Members attending remotely are reminded of the constitutional requirement that, to participate in public meetings, members must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex. This is due to the constitutional requirement that, to participate in public meetings, members must be physically present within the confines of the place where the Parliament has chosen to sit. In this regard, I ask members participating via Microsoft Teams to confirm they are on the grounds of the Leinster House complex if they wish to contribute to the meeting. I remind all those in attendance to make sure their mobile phones are switched off or on silent mode.
Today's meeting concerns matters relating to child poverty. We are here to engage with Department officials and to receive an update on recent developments on this important issue. We will also learn more about the recent announcement relating to the revised targets. With that in mind, I welcome the following officials from the Department of Social Protection: Mr. Niall Egan, assistant secretary general; Mr. Rónán Hession, assistant secretary general; Ms Karen Kennedy, principal officer; and Ms Denise Ryan, assistant principal officer. I invite Mr. Egan to make his opening remarks.
Mr. Niall Egan:
I am the assistant secretary general in the Department of Social Protection with responsibility for the corporate division, which includes the social inclusion aspect. I am joined by my colleague Mr. Rónán Hession, who is the assistant secretary general with responsibility for working age policy in the Department; Ms Karen Kennedy, principal officer; and Ms Denise Ryan, assistant principal officer. I thank the Cathaoirleach and members of the joint committee for inviting us here today to discuss matters relating to child poverty.
Consistent poverty is measured by identifying individuals or households who are both at risk of poverty and experience enforced deprivation due to a lack of resources. This means assessing whether a person’s income falls below a certain threshold, which is set at 60% of the national median income, while also determining if they are unable to afford necessities. The use of consistent poverty as a measurement of poverty is reported by the CSO as part of the survey on income and living conditions series.
In September, the Government announced a new ambitious child poverty target. This new target is 3% or less consistent poverty, to be achieved by the end of 2030. This target is ambitious, reflecting a reduction of 5.5% from the current child consistent poverty rate of 8.5%, as reported by the CSO. The Minister for Social Protection has made it clear that no level of child poverty is acceptable and that the new child poverty target will work to focus Government policies on targeting supports at those families who need them most. In addition to the new child poverty target, the child poverty and well-being programme office in the Department of the Taoiseach is developing a dashboard of indicators that will allow for the measurement of child poverty and well-being in an holistic manner across government.
Tackling child poverty will require sustained investment and commitment across government for the remainder of the decade. Budget 2026 contained a social welfare package that consisted of a €10 increase in core weekly social welfare payments and a comprehensive range of measures targeted at reducing child poverty. These targeted measures amount to an investment of €320 million next year and included the largest child support payment increase in the history of the State, which will benefit approximately 330,000 children whose parents are in receipt of a social welfare payment. In addition, families in receipt of the working family payment will become eligible for fuel allowance, there will be a €5 increase in fuel allowance from €33 to €38 per week from January 2026 and a €60 increase in weekly income thresholds for the working family payment for all family sizes. The back to school clothing and footwear allowance will be extended to children aged two and three years if they are eligible for the allowance. The back to work family dividend is to be extended to recipients of disability allowance and blind pension, and there is to be €20 per month increase in the domiciliary care allowance.
Tackling child poverty requires a concerted focus and commitment across Government Departments to tackle what is a multifaceted and complex issue. Measures that will be successful in reducing child poverty can be divided into two broad categories: measures designed to enhance family income and measures that involve the delivery of services designed to enhance quality of life. Guiding the work of Government Departments in tackling poverty is the cross-government anti-poverty strategy, the Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020 to 2025. The Department of Social Protection is currently developing a successor to the current roadmap for social inclusion. The new roadmap for social inclusion will be published in the first half of 2026 and will, for the first time, contain a focus on reducing child poverty, in line with the Government’s new child poverty target.
The programme for Government also includes a range of reform measures in the area of child poverty. The Government will: explore a targeted child benefit payment and examine the interaction this would have with existing targeted supports to reduce child poverty, such as the working family payment and child support payment, and introduce a new working age payment, which will ensure that individuals always see an increase in income when they work or take on additional hours. Draft proposals will be published for full consultation with stakeholders in advance of Government agreeing the final design of the working age payment.
I look forward to the discussion on this important issue and hearing the views of the members of this committee on child poverty. My colleagues and I are happy to answer any questions the committee may have.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Egan. I now invite members to discuss this issue. I remind members participating remotely to use the raise hand feature and to cancel it when they have spoken.
Anne Rabbitte (Fianna Fail)
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I thank Mr. Egan and his team for being here this morning. He has clearly set out the plan and the Minister's approach. Addressing child poverty over the term of the programme for Government is one of the Minister's number one issues. Mr. Egan has clearly set out what happened in the last budget.
I am interested in hearing about the extension of the back to work family dividend to recipients of the disability allowance and the blind pension. The reason I want to focus on this is that they are the parents of children. They may not be able to access work. I want to understand more about that targeted measure.
Mr. Rónán Hession:
I am happy to address that. We have had the back to work family dividend in place for other schemes for a number of years. How it works is that, where you have a primary claim associated with a child support payment, what we used to call an increase for a qualified child, when you close that claim, you still keep the child element for another year and half of it for a second year. This is an attempt to smooth the transition for people with children who are going back to work through a tapering off of the payment. It is not that large a scheme but we have used it for jobseeker's schemes and other schemes. Ms Kennedy has just advised me that approximately 43,000 child support payments are currently being made to people on disability schemes. We hope this group will benefit from this measure. Those exiting these payments because they are going back to work will be allowed to keep the child element for a full year and half of it for a second year.
Anne Rabbitte (Fianna Fail)
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That is something I was not aware of. I thank Mr. Hession for that. It is really welcome to see the extension of the back to school footwear allowance to the years covered by the ECCE pre-school programme. How many children is that going to support? When does it commence?
Mr. Rónán Hession:
It will be introduced in June. About 35,000 new children will be covered. It will cost approximately €5.5 million next year. It is an age-related payment. For younger children, it will be €160. If the children are 12 or older, it will be €285. That gets paid in the summer. It comes into effect from June.
Anne Rabbitte (Fianna Fail)
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May I query that number? Is Mr. Hession sure about that 35,000? There are about 99,000 children on the ECCE programme but 35,000 children will qualify for this back to school allowance. Is that the correct figure?
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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I want talk about the measure of consistent poverty used by the Department and the fact that it excludes housing costs. I do not need to tell the witnesses that we are in the middle of a housing crisis. What is the justification for that exclusion because it leaves out a chunk of people, with children at the business end of it, who are at risk of poverty? That risk is being exacerbated by the massively high rents they have to pay and the lack of access to secure accommodation. Will the witnesses talk me through what the resistance is to using that because it seems it would be a rounder measure that would give a fuller picture?
I will defer to Mr. Egan's wisdom on it as to why the Department does not do it.
Mr. Niall Egan:
I would not use the term resistance to the measurement. We were very conscious of that issue when we were developing the new child poverty target. The reason we use consistent poverty is because it is the measurement of poverty published by the CSO in the survey on income and living conditions, SILC. It allows us to tie it back to the previous child poverty target, which was consistent poverty, but it is also consistent in relation to how we measure the national poverty target contained within the Roadmap for Social Inclusion for the entire population, which is to reduce consistent poverty to 2%. It allows us to track children and how they are progressing in relation to the population as a whole as part of the overall-----
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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I understand that, but does Mr. Egan not feel like the Department is missing out? Given we are in the middle of a housing crisis, the massive cost of rents now is so materially relevant that it would strike me that the Department is actually missing out. I understand the need for consistency, and, in fact, it could do both. It would be more than possible to do both. The Department has the resources, I am sure.
Mr. Niall Egan:
We do measure and we do take into account housing costs. We have a publication every year called the social impact monitor. In that, we measure the impact that housing costs have on poverty rates. We publish a report every year. We intend to do that over the course of the next roadmap for social inclusion as well. We are, therefore, very conscious of this issue in terms of making sure that we keep housing costs monitored closely. We are absolutely open to considering how that can be formally part of a reporting mechanism under the new annual roadmap for social inclusion.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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I am sorry to cut across Mr. Egan. It is just that if the Department is not including it in its metrics for the child poverty targets, then it is going to miss out. Therefore, there is a significant chunk of children who will not be included in that who are at risk of poverty or living in what I would call consistent poverty when we factor in the housing costs. It just strikes me that including the figure in a separate report, and I understand the monitor, which is a very welcome piece of research, means it is kind of existing separately somehow and is not incorporated if it is not mentioned as part of the targets. The targets are effectively excluding those people who are being crippled, or their parents have been crippled, with the cost of housing.
Mr. Niall Egan:
As I said, and I fully appreciate the point the Deputy is making, we will be reporting on it. We have always reported on it. Our target is singular in order to basically be consistent with what went before, but also the fact is that having a single target is actually very powerful. It cuts through an awful lot of the noise. As I said, however, we are committed. We can highlight and see how we can maybe strengthen it, if the Deputy is saying it is kind of buried within the social impact monitor, because it is a very important document. As part of the current Roadmap for Social Inclusion, we produce an annual progress report. We can absolutely look at how the future new roadmap will look. That annual report looks at this issue and reports on it on an annual basis. We are very open to that.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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That would be welcome. Incorporating it into the targets would actually be effective rather than just highlighting and pointing at it and all the rest of it.
I will ask about the groups that are left out. The ESRI Child Poverty on the Island of Ireland report mentions specific groups, such as children from Traveller and Roma communities, as obviously facing a much higher risk of poverty. However, the SILC data does not always include kids who are living in emergency accommodation or who are left in IPAS. They could be living in tents or cars or wherever it is they are living if they are not living in a household. Five thousand children are homeless, and that is recorded homeless. That is not even the ones who are in domestic violence shelters or sleeping in overcrowded accommodation. If they are not in a household and the Department is not capturing them, is Mr. Egan a bit concerned that the data he is working off is actually leaving people out? It is definitely leaving out 5,000 children, which I would have thought is a big enough chunk of children. Would Mr. Egan be concerned that it is leaving out groups like Traveller and Roma children - people who do not live in a traditional bricks and mortar dwelling. Those children, who are probably experiencing levels of deprivation, poverty and exclusion that we could not even imagine are not really part of the Department's dataset. Is Mr. Egan concerned that the Department is missing a chunk of children in terms of the child poverty targets?
Mr. Niall Egan:
We are aware of that issue and the Deputy is absolutely right to highlight it. The issue is that the methodology is with the Central Statistics Office, which actually has to be consistent with the Eurostat methodology in order for it to report poverty data to Eurostat to allow comparisons across member states. It is an issue I know the Central Statistics Office is looking at, as are we in the Department and colleagues in the Department of the Taoiseach in the child poverty well-being unit. How can we engage, particularly with the Traveller and Roma cohort, to increase the sample size within the SILC? The issue is the number of homeless children currently who are not included in the SILC methodology.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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I really feel like the Department is missing a trick there. Bear in mind the first child who was left in emergency accommodation in the State, in a hotel or bed and breakfast accommodation or wherever the Department is putting them, was over 20 years ago. There is a big time lag there. I am very concerned that the numbers who are being excluded are actually growing. It might make the child poverty targets look a little bit easier to reach but actually that cohort are being left out. To be fair, I understand that Mr. Egan does not set policy and I completely get that, but at this stage, to be just looking at that is important. Will Mr. Egan give us an idea if he intends to incorporate those kids into any of the statistics? They really are left out.
Mr. Niall Egan:
The way the statistics are captured and measured is under the remit of the Central Statistics Office. Therefore, while we can ask and highlight issues, and we have discussed this with our colleagues in the CSO, there are limitations on their ability, and they have to have a consistent methodology.
Mr. Niall Egan:
What we can do and what we do is track. Obviously, the vast majority of these families are in receipt of social welfare payments. We have that method available to us. They may be in receipt of supplementary welfare supports as well as additional needs payments. We can look at how those measurements and payments to those families can showcase this cohort. In terms of tracking the official statistics, that is an issue but we have to go by a methodology that is set, and it is a published methodology from the Central Statistics Office.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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Has the Department ever asked the CSO to include them?
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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The day of households is decades behind us now. We have people - kids - living two or three years in emergency accommodation or locked up in hotel rooms. I appreciate and understand what Mr. Egan is saying. I fully get that he does not set policy. However, it does strike me that 20-odd years on from the first child sleeping in emergency accommodation, the Department has had plenty of time to incorporate them into the data by whatever means. I understand the need for consistency, but if the CSO had been including them 20 years ago, we would actually have a consistent picture. These are the kids who are absolutely forgotten about, and for the very reason that is contributing to their poverty and the way they are forced to live, which is the fact that they do not have a home. Those kids are the ones who are left out. Therefore, Mr. Egan can see why I would have an issue, although I think I am not the only one who would have an issue with, it to be fair.
In terms of the Department's engagement with the CSO on this specific issue, has Mr. Egan had discussions or meetings with it and made a request that it would include it or is it just not possible? Is there another way to do it? How could that be done?
Mr. Niall Egan:
We have a regular engagement twice a year with the CSO on a range of issues. We have an awful lot of work, essentially, with the CSO in terms of our dataset and its requirements. As part of that, we have raised the issue of the SILC sample size and increasing representation within the sample size. However, I have to be honest; this is an issue of which the CSO is very aware. It is very concerned about increasing the sample size of SILC. It has said to us that this is a priority for it in terms of increasing the representative sample size. There are limitations in terms of what it can do, however, particularly with households that are homeless, so I cannot give any promises. We are happy to raise it again with the CSO, but it is limited in what it can do, to be honest with the Deputy.
Peter Roche (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Egan and the other witnesses here with us this morning. They are most welcome. This is, in many ways, a very challenging conversation we are having and it is a very complex one to resolve. While we all have a national brief, one thing that concerns me is that in the west and north-west region we have the highest percentage of child poverty, and that includes my own county of Galway. I find that interesting. I would have thought that maybe we would not have been the highest. I am trying to understand the reasons for this. The witnesses might be able to throw some light on why we are the highest, and why we are different in that regard. I thought the population growth might have been greater in other regions rather than the west but I am anxious to understand how the witnesses might respond to that.
Mr. Niall Egan:
With regard to the way poverty is measured, we use consistent poverty but consistent poverty is the overlap between deprivation. There are 11 questions that a household is asked around whether it can afford basic necessities. If you answer that you cannot afford two or more of those, you are considered to be in deprivation. The other measure is an income measure, which concerns relative income and it measures if you are at risk of poverty. It measures income across the entire country. It calculates what median income is, or the midpoint of income. It rates that such that if a household is 60%, if its income is below that midpoint, it is deemed to be at risk of poverty.
The Central Statistics Office recently published an administrative dataset. There is a map within that which has a red colour indicator for areas with higher poverty levels. The Deputy is right; the highest concentration of poverty levels tends to be in the west and the north west. The Deputy's analysis is absolutely correct. On the map, the areas that are predominantly less red or at the opposite end of the spectrum tend to be around urban areas. What that is reflecting from the CSO's analysis is that they have higher levels of income. The income levels within certain urban areas are driving the differential between that rural-urban divide. That is why we are seeing higher levels of poverty in the north west and the west compared with the rest of the country but particularly compared with the likes of Dublin, Cork and Galway city, which have high levels of income relative to the national median.
Peter Roche (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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One of the things most of us will have to be cognisant of is the prevalence of drugs and maybe drink. I am trying to tease out something. Would that be a contributing factor when one is doing an analysis on child poverty? Is there much consideration given to what use is being made of the income that families get? In other words, is there a possibility that there are problems that may not be identified in that some families, for one reason or another, have a tendency to spend much of their disposable income on feeding that habit? Is it is a kind of loaded question but I would imagine that somewhere, in the overall scheme of things, there would be issues presenting as a consequence of that.
Mr. Niall Egan:
I am afraid I am not familiar with that, and I do not think the Department has access to that information. We have never collated data on how people use income. Our role is to identify that people have basic needs and income requirements and we pay them the amount we have to under legislation. We are not aware how they spend that money nor would we be trying to capture that data. We look more at supports for individuals. We do engage with an awful lot of people through our public employment service. Issues the Deputy has identified would have come up with our colleagues in relation to accessing State supports to help and support individuals to bridge that gap. Fundamentally, what we are trying to do is to move more people closer to the labour market and ultimately get them into employment.
Peter Roche (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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I have a final question, Chair - I will not hog it. It is suggested that the family resource centres in Galway have a considerable waiting list for basic supports such as food banks and budgeting advice. How would the witnesses see their Department channelling or targeting that so there are no deficits? In other words, will people who pop into the family resource centre find, within a reasonable timeframe, the advice and supports they are really waiting for?
Mr. Niall Egan:
I am not very familiar with the family resource centres. I know they are predominantly funded through Tusla. I think the HSE also has a component. We do not have direct funding relationships with the majority of family resource centres. Where we come onto the pitch is where we support and have financial arrangements with a lot of local partnerships that help us deliver the public employment service. As I mentioned previously, the public employment service is our network for interacting with and supporting individuals. We have mechanisms in place working with local partnerships, community employment schemes, rural social schemes and Tús schemes and also supports for further education and training services in accessing supports for people and bridging those gaps. I am afraid I cannot give the Deputy any more information on that. My colleague, Mr. Rónán Hession, wants to come in here.
Mr. Rónán Hession:
Food banks and so on were mentioned. We also have the Fund for European Aid to the most Deprived, FEAD, which is a European-funded programme that happens across all European countries. It provides that sort of funding to food banks. We deal with local groups all around the country where they have allocations. As far as I am aware, there is no excess demand in that way. We have enough resources and it is quite well funded through European programmes but if there are particular issues in Galway that the Deputy wants us to look into, I ask him to let us know. I am not sure if the group the Deputy is talking about is part of that programme. Sometimes there are community-based programmes and others that are networked through us. I would certainly be happy to follow up.
To add to the Deputy's earlier point on people with addiction issues, as Mr. Egan said, we do not really have information on how people spend the money but - and I also say this with regard to child homelessness - the statistics can only capture so much. It is a bit like getting your blood pressure checked. It is an indicator of something but it is not everything you need to check. Our community welfare officers and teams around the country are often dealing with people who, unfortunately, for whatever reasons, have chaotic lives and a lot of issues where you have multiple agencies in place. At local level, we do engage, whether it is with the HSE or other local groups, to try to support those families but often it involves different agencies working together. We also have the homelessness agency in Dublin.
Peter Roche (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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For me, it would be critically important to have an understanding. You can keep throwing money at a problem forever, so to speak, but if there is an underlying issue or problem, domestic or otherwise, that is causing that level of poverty and needs to be managed or treated, it would be essential that there be some link to ensure you do not continue to feed something that is not getting the desired response or result.
Mr. Rónán Hession:
Absolutely. For example, sometimes when you are looking at those issues, the income support is part of it. That is why services are also important. For example, our Department provides the hot school meals programmes. If, for whatever reason, the money is not getting to the children in households, there is a support whereby they can get hot food in primary school, and there are other supports that can try to help. What we see in the poverty statistics is that Ireland relies quite heavily on income supports. A lot of the heavy lifting is done through the social welfare system. In other countries, there are different mixes, whether it is income supports or services and so on.
We do need that mix. It is for exactly that reason. Money will only go so far but for some people it is actually the direct intervention that is more suitable.
Peter Roche (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Chair. I apologise but I must go next door to a health forum.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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I also have a few questions for Mr. Hession and the team. The child support payment went up €8 and €16, respectively. How many are in receipt of that payment at the moment? What does Mr. Hession think is the difference between that and an additional targeted child benefit payment? What would the difference be? I would say the child support payment is already targeted at the moment. It is a receipt of €50 per week or €68 per week depending on the age of the child. How would Mr. Hession differentiate that payment to what the Department is hoping to explore in the targeted child benefit payment going forward?
Mr. Rónán Hession:
I am happy to deal with that. Some 330,000 children are getting the child support payment. That payment is an add-on to a primary payment. These are people who are already in receipt of a social welfare payment. This helps us to target it. You will find that most international systems have a mix and especially when it comes to child supports. There is a mix of the universal and targeted payments and there are also tax measures and other supports.
On the matter of the second tier of child benefit, we are in the early stages of the discourse around that. To some extent people have different pictures in their minds of what it involves. Some people will see it as getting a monthly payment and maybe some people will get a second line in the payslip, which is the targeted part. The ESRI has put out as a proposal that involves a kind of re-engineering of the working family payment, which is the payment paid to families who are doing at least about 19 hours a week. That involves quite a fundamental overhaul of a number of different payments, which would effectively roll the child support payment into a working family payment and make a number of other design changes. We are at the stage where we are exploring this. It is our job to make sure the Government is informed of a range of options. We certainly welcome the ESRI applying its thoughts to it and its proposals. It is quite complex. We had a number very productive discussions with the agency on it. There are a number of ways in which that could be targeted. One of the core questions at the start is who should benefit. On the universal payment, if you are targeting child measures, we have typically focused on those in receipt of the child support payment because we know they have already gone through a qualification process for the working family payment, which is what the Government has done in the budget this time around. Broadly speaking, that is the sort of target cohort. Then there are design choices about whether it is something that is part of the child benefit payment or if it is something else and whether it sits better with that type of overhaul the ESRI was talking about.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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My question is that the child support payment is already targeted so why go through another process again in relation to another target or another process or version. Is this not already working?
Mr. Rónán Hession:
In its analysis the ESRI looks at whether, without trying to be too clever, we can just push more resources into those. It does an analysis around what that translates to in terms of poverty impacts. The agency also looks similarly at putting it through the working family payment or some combination of those. You do get results. I know from some of the stakeholder groups we have spoken to, because we have asked everyone to consider this and give us their thoughts, that the experience of complex policy reform is that sometimes there is a preference for, or the stakeholder groups are more comfortable with, something that is familiar where they can have a good sense of what the result will be as opposed to something that is very new where there may be unexpected consequences. At this stage we are at the conceptual point of looking at all considerations. Definitely one viable option is to ask why be too clever and why not just target it if it is working. Having made a big leap this year in the budget, those rates have gone up a lot in both those payments. We now need to monitor what that translates to in terms of poverty.
One of the tricky issues can be due to the way the at risk of poverty measurement is calculated as a threshold that is a distance from median income, as Mr. Egan explained. Sometimes if a person is very far below that, an income can push them and really improve their situation but not get them over the threshold, so it does not show up and it does not register as an improvement. We have to look at what are the changes, particularly for low income households.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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My other question is on the back to work family dividend. How many recipients of that do we have at the moment? Is the Department intending to expand this to the disability allowance and the blind pension? How many people is that?
Mr. Rónán Hession:
The current number of recipients in terms of families is 2,100. That represents about 4,000 children. The budget measure will probably help about 250 families. We find it is quite a slow exit rate to full employment from disability payments, which is part of some separate discussions about how we help people with that.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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Perfect. Finally, in terms of benchmarking internationally on child poverty, the Department has a connection with the ESRI but has the Department benchmarked against any other European country in relation to child poverty targets and could the witnesses give us some examples of those?
Mr. Niall Egan:
When we were looking at the child poverty target, we were looking at different jurisdictions and what they did. There is not a single answer here. We looked at the Scottish example. They have an approach that is very good but which we do not think would work as well in an Irish context.
On poverty levels in Ireland specifically, Ireland is probably about sixth in the EU, but that is the poverty level so I would have to come back to the Cathaoirleach specifically about child poverty levels. We are operating above the EU average in good performance and it has been improving. Last year we were seventh in EU. In the latest statistics that were published based on the Eurostat for 2024 we were sixth. I will have to revert specifically in relation to child poverty.
As part of the child poverty target we did a public consultation and we asked people a range of questions on a range of measures we were looking at. We took on board a lot of the comments and suggestions on how to measure it and the range. Responses we received included trying to eliminate child poverty, but unfortunately that is not possible in the way it is measured. It is relative to income so you will never be able to eliminate it based on a measurement, but as our Minister said and as I alluded to in my opening statement, it is not acceptable to have any child in child poverty. It is a guiding light and a priority for the Government. I will revert in relation to child poverty statistics from an EU perspective.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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Great. Mr. Egan might forward them on to the clerk here who will circulate them.
William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)
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I apologise for being late. Public transport let me down this morning. Trust me, I was on time but they were not. Anyway, I have six questions to put forward. How is the Department progressing towards the Government's target to make Ireland the best country in Europe to be a child by 2030, particularly by reducing consistent child poverty rates by 2025? What evidence has the Department on the impact of the recent core welfare increases such as the qualified child payment and the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance on lifting children out of poverty? Given that child poverty is a cross-cutting issue, how effective is the Department in its joined-up thinking with the Departments of education, health and housing to ensure a co-ordinated approach under the child poverty and well-being programme office? How is the sixth Department ensuring that social protection supports are effectively reaching the most vulnerable families such as the lone parent households, families of children with disabilities, and families in homelessness and in direct provision? What mechanisms are in place in 2025 to track child poverty in real time or near real time? How is the data being used to inform and adjust policy, such as more rapid interventions for the children? What new or enhanced social protection measures are being considered for budget 2026 to further reduce child poverty especially in the light of inflationary pressures and the rising costs of living for families?
William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)
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If I could just have a quick response, please.
Mr. Niall Egan:
Absolutely. As the Deputy said, the Government priority for the timeline for Ireland to become the best country in which to be a child by 2030 is a multifaceted issue. From the Department's perspective, our goal is to reduce child poverty. We have a new child poverty target to reduce consistent child poverty to 3% by the end of the decade. We are currently at 8.5%, so it is a huge challenge. This ties into a question about how we measure poverty and real-time effectiveness. We measure child poverty based on consistent poverty, which is measured by the Central Statistics Office as part of its survey on income and living conditions published every year. It is the overlap between deprivation and income poverty, and is known as the risk of poverty. It is how these two measurements overlap and it is the percentage of children within that. This is usually published in quarter 1 of every year by the Central Statistics Office and we will be tracking it each year over the lifetime of this target and reporting on it.
The Deputy is right about cross-cutting being a huge issue in how to tackle child poverty, because it is not just about income but also services. Other committee members referred to homelessness and health services, which Deputy Roche alluded to. Since being established in 2023, the child poverty and well-being unit in the Department of the Taoiseach has taken this issue on board. A programme plan has been identified and a concerted focus has been placed on child poverty across government. The unit will produce a report after budget 2026 on the impact on child poverty of the measures the Department of Social Protection and other Departments will introduce as part of budget 2026. The unit participates in an annual summit held by the Taoiseach every year - it was held in September this year - to bring a focus on child poverty. It is to the fore in liaising with Departments in advance of the budget to highlight the issue of child poverty and to discuss how child poverty will be tackled as part of their budget measures and their asks in advance of the budget.
As part of budget 2026, the Department introduced a package of measures, leaving aside the core social welfare rates, that amounts to €320 million specifically to target child poverty. These relate to the largest ever increase in the child support payment, namely, €8 for under-12s and a €16 increase for children who are 12 and over. That is by far the largest increase the Department has ever made in the child support payment. We have increased the working family payment thresholds by €60, with effect from January, for all family sizes. We have extended the fuel allowance to all recipients of the working family payment. We have just spoken about the extension of the back-to-work family dividend for people who are exiting the disability allowance or blind pension for employment. The domiciliary care allowance will also go up by €20 per month from January. There are a few other measures as well.
I have tried to answer comprehensively. I am not sure that I got everything but I might ask my colleague Mr. Hession if he wants to contribute.
Mr. Rónán Hession:
Mr. Egan covered a lot of the ground. I will see if there is anything I can add from my own notes. Regarding the core welfare rates and whether we have done any analysis of how they affect people in poverty, we published an analysis with the budget showing the effects on people in different income categories. It shows that the benefits are overwhelmingly felt by the lower income categories. We always check this as part of the budget process, and we publish details on the income deciles to show who benefits across the spectrum.
The Deputy is correct about the cross-cutting nature of this. We work all the time with other Departments in various high-level groups, including with health and education, to make sure that the issues are joined up. As senior civil servants, it is our job to make sure that the system stays connected and that we are raising issues across government.
Mr. Egan outlined new measures around the budget. As part of the programme for Government, we are working on a range of measures. We have had a discussion with the Chair around the second-tier child benefit. We are also looking at a working-age payment, because one of the issues is that we want to make sure that work pays off for people and that our system is flexible enough for people when they combine work and welfare. We want to make sure that this benefits people.
Regarding the real-time tracking of poverty data, as Mr. Egan outlined earlier, we will be publishing regular updates and dashboards that will track key indicators of our progress towards the target. While it is a 2030 target, there will be much more regular reporting throughout the year.
Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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I welcome our witnesses today. I understand from their introduction that nobody wants a target for child poverty but that there is a target and I get that the Minister is working towards getting rid of child poverty. How much does the Department think it will to cost to get to zero child poverty or to the target the Minister has set and how many years will it take to get there?
The working family payment increase of €60 is very welcome, but will the officials confirm that working family payment recipients do not get child support payments and do not qualify for them? How many of those who are entitled to the working family payment are losing out on the child support payment as a result?
Mr. Niall Egan:
I will take the first questions and I will ask my colleague to respond to the questions about the working family payment. We do not have a figure for how much it will cost to achieve the target but it will be quite a bit - I think that goes without saying. This was a very focused social welfare package to help tackle child poverty and at €320 million it is a significant component of the overall social welfare package in budget 2026. Tackling child poverty is not just about welfare supports. It will also be very effective in increasing employment levels of recipients of social welfare and participation rates. We have seen a remarkable increase in participation rates, particularly among females. This has had a positive impact on poverty levels generally across the State. Our focus is not just on income supports. We are also trying to help people bridge the gap between being reliant on social welfare and moving into employment. This is not just the work of the Department. The role of the child poverty and well-being unit in the Department of Taoiseach has really brought to the fore the fact it is about a range of issues and the unit tracks it across six separate issues. It includes housing, education, targeted services and reducing the cost of childcare in line with the commitment in the programme for Government. These measures will facilitate more people to increase their ability to access employment and increase their take-home pay, which will in turn drive the reduction in poverty levels. There is no single figure but our progress on the child poverty target will be reported on every year.
As part of the new roadmap for social inclusion, which will be published in the first half of next year, we are asking Departments about their targets and commitments. This will feed into action points for the new strategy and then there will be reporting on progress each year over the next five years on this focus on reducing child poverty. My colleague has just reminded me that the Department of the Taoiseach will be supplementing our child poverty target with a dashboard of indicators to take an holistic view of child poverty. One of the issues this will focus on is a rolling three-year average of child poverty to identify trends. This will ensure that it is not each year in isolation but will look back over three years to identify trends. As part of this dashboard they will also be looking at some of the issues we have discussed here, such as childcare costs and homelessness provision. I will ask my colleague Mr. Hession to address the Deputy's other questions.
Mr. Rónán Hession:
As I am sure the Deputy knows, the working family payment is constructed differently.
The typical social welfare payment will have a payment to the customer and then there is a top-up if they have dependent adults or children. Our working family payment is a different method. There is a threshold for a particular family size and 60% of the difference between income and that threshold is received. It is a different way of paying the money. It is not intended to have an additional child support payment element to it.
When we look to see what we need to do to support children in a budget, for example, we always look at both elements. We always look at what we need to do on CSP, which covers about 330,000 children, and on the working family payment, which covers about 100,000 children. There is some overlap. For example, people on the one-parent family payment can get both. The Deputy is correct that there is no child support payment element to the working family payment. It does, though, try to deliver a financial benefit through a different formula. The change in the budget was a €6 increase, which means about €90 million extra will be going to about 48,000 families.
Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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I will come back on the working family payment. I have two further questions, if that is okay. A lot of mention has been made of the Taoiseach’s Department in the context of children and well-being. How often do officials of the Department of Social Protection meet with that Department? As far as the witnesses are aware, how often does that Department meet? When there is a meeting, what discussions take place? Mention was made of six separate issues. Could we clarify what six separate issues are discussed by the Taoiseach’s Department when it has targets? I know the witnesses are not representing the Taoiseach’s Department, but it was mentioned that there were six separate issues.
Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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I am sorry to interrupt. How often would “very regularly” be?
Mr. Niall Egan:
It was not only that. The Taoiseach’s Department also helped to co-ordinate the process. It brought in representatives of the CSO to help with the analysis and the work in relation to it in other Departments as well. That helped us to prepare analysis in relation to the child poverty target. We would have a pre-meeting in advance of the budget each year as well with the child poverty and well-being unit. We have an input too, like every Government Department has, and there is a request immediately after the budget concerning the measures contained in our social welfare budget, such as in the 2026 package, for example. This feeds into the Department of the Taoiseach. It pulls together an annual report reflecting on the child poverty measures and well-being measures contained in each budget and that will be published shortly thereafter. There is very regular ongoing engagement. There are also many conversations, Cabinet committee meetings and senior official group meetings where these issues are discussed in advance. Members of our steering group are on the roadmap for social inclusion group. We work very closely in that context. They are active members in this regard as well.
In terms of the six areas the Department is focused on, this is part of its programme plan. The first area is income support and joblessness, and we obviously have a very significant part to play in that regard. The second area is early learning and childcare. The third is the cost of education. The fourth is family homelessness. The fifth is service integration and the sixth is participation in arts, culture and sport. These are the six thematic areas the child poverty and well-being unit is focusing on. This is part of its programme plan, which is divided across those six areas.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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We are running out of time. I call Deputy Louise O’Reilly.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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I will make one point, although the Deputy concerned has gone. I think he was trying to make some kind of a connection between children in poverty and parents in addiction. According to the Health Research Board, “In areas that are most and least deprived there is little difference in the prevalence of drug use", although there is obviously a disproportionate impact on those poorer communities. I think that is worth saying. I feel the Deputy was making a sound there that maybe only dogs could hear.
In relation to the means test for HAP, I understand that on the part of the Department of Social Protection child maintenance is excluded, and it is not excluded for the calculation of HAP. This is not, however, universal across local authorities. I know this is not exactly within the remit of the witnesses but, given the points made earlier, a significant chunk of kids are being left out of this research. For those receiving child maintenance, is there anything the Department of Social Protection can do? I have raised this matter with the Minister. This is not a criticism of the witnesses’ Department, because I know it is doing it right. Can anything be done from a leadership perspective by the Department of Social Protection, however, to ensure this approach is rolled out for the calculation of HAP and other benefits? I ask this because it materially contributes to deprivation levels, etc.
Mr. Rónán Hession:
I was on the child maintenance review group. It was a very important outcome of that report that we no longer count child maintenance in the social welfare means test. I had a meeting with my counterpart in the Department of housing about two or three weeks ago on this very specific issue to see what it can do.
Mr. Rónán Hession:
To some extent, some of the discretion is at local authority level rather than centrally with that Department, and that is part of the complication. This issue has also come up concerning carers as well. We had it at our annual carers forum regarding how the disregard applies to the carer support grant. There is a level of dissonance across the means testing. It is something we need to think about, whether this is across social welfare, SUSI, medical cards or HAP. There are sometimes policy reasons for the difference and sometimes it has been just an evolution over time and the orchestra is not tuned. We have raised this issue at official level and it is something I also know the Minister has written on. It is on the radar of the Department of housing. We have discussed it and I think it is trying to engage with it. In some of the HAP situations, it is a question of there being a cost to the local authorities. It is their call rather than the Department's and it is about navigating that aspect.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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I understand that. I am just referring to the leadership that could be provided by the Department, because this issue does cut across a number of Departments. Mr. Hession will know himself that sometimes when everybody is responsible, nobody is responsible. It is just about bringing them together and ensuring there is consistency. This is important, particularly when this is being used to measure. Obviously, a target is set there. The situation at present just makes it harder to know in terms of time, and things like that. I will just make that point and thank Mr. Hession for his response.
I turn to an issue on which I do not have a settled view but one that has been raised with me a few times. I am talking about situations where parents are co-parenting. I mean actually co-parenting. I am not talking about taking kids to a fast-food restaurant for a couple of hours but about splitting everything and splitting the costs. I am aware of the research saying that sometimes when this is done it does not necessarily benefit the children to the same extent from both parents. I understand that, which is why I am saying I have no settled view on the matter. Has the Department has done any work on how it could be done or what it would take to be able to do it? I say this because there are genuine court-ordered co-parent arrangements where it is split. It is a happy situation if people get on and they split the money, but we know that they very often do not. The costs, though, are still often split very evenly.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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I ask Mr. Hession to give a brief answer to this question.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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That is right.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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I might correspond with Mr. Hession on this matter.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy O’Reilly. I call Deputy Wall.
Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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One of the issues I deal with daily through my clinics and my office concerns additional needs payments. Is there any justification for or a reason behind these payments having been cut? It is a payment that directly helps people with poverty issues. The amount allocated has been cut from €80 million last year to €58 million this year, which was a €22 million cut in the funding for these additional needs payments in budget 2026. There are also the basic supplementary welfare allowance payments, which obviously people may have to qualify for as well. There was a cut of €18 million in the funding for those payments. Can the reason or rationale for these cuts be explained to me at a time when we are trying to target child poverty?
Mr. Niall Egan:
In terms of the way the existing level of service discussions with the Department of public expenditure and reform happen, it is based on projected expenditure.
We are not projected this year to spend the €80 million. We are projected to spend just below the allocation we have for next year. It is an increase in the allocation of what we expect to spend this year.
Mr. Rónán Hession:
It is demand-led. It is not the case that people will come in and we will say, “Sorry, we are out of budget.” It is demand-led. We will support people. It is more a question of how it is profiled in the central report in the budget. There has been no cut, budget cap or restriction placed on our ability to support people.
With regard to the trend of payments, we have seen an increase in payments in recent years. The biggest driver is local authority kit-outs, which sort of ebbs and flows according to completions. The other issue is that, at the early stages of the war in Ukraine, we spent a lot of money on clothing and essential items for people who had first arrived in the country. The number, therefore, increased a bit in a way that we were not necessarily expecting to carry on. I assure the Deputy that, in terms of people coming to us for support, our community welfare officers are not working under a budget cap. It is demand-led.
Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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To confirm what Mr. Hession just said, there will be no cap on additional needs payments in 2026, as we tackle child poverty. This is a huge issue for me, as I am sure it is for other Deputies and Senators. When people present to a community welfare officer, their applications will be treated and there will be no cap on the payments.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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We are out of time. I thank the officials for their contributions and for providing the various briefing materials in advance to assist committee members in this deliberation. We will suspend for a few minutes to facilitate the exchange of witnesses.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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I will read a note on privilege and housekeeping matters before I begin. Witnesses and members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that would be regarded as damaging to the good name of a person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction I might make.
Members attending remotely are reminded of the constitutional requirement that, to participate in public meetings, members must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex. This is due to the constitutional requirement that, to participate in public meetings, members must be physically present within the confines of the place where the Parliament has chosen to sit. In this regard, I ask members participating via Microsoft Teams to confirm they are on the grounds of the Leinster House complex if they wish to contribute to the meeting. I remind all those in attendance to make sure their mobile phones are switched off or on silent mode.
I welcome our witnesses this morning. From the Community Platform, we have Dr. Nat O'Connor, assistant professor of social policy, University College Dublin, UCD; Ms. Gayle Smith, information and policy officer, Treoir; and Mr. Paul Ginnell, director of European Anti-Poverty Network, EAPN, Ireland. From the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, we have Ms. Louise Bayliss, head of social justice and policy, and Mr. Robert Thornton, manager at the Vincentian MESL Research Centre. I thank all the witnesses for attending this meeting to discuss and review matters relating to child poverty. This discussion is also particularly timely as the United Nations International Day for the Eradication of Poverty occurs this Friday, 17 October. I invite Dr. O'Connor from the Community Platform to make his opening remarks.
Dr. Nat O'Connor:
I thank the Cathaoirleach for the invitation to address the committee on the topic of eliminating consistent poverty. The Community Platform is an alliance of 31 national networks and organisations working to reduce poverty, social exclusion and inequality. The Central Statistics Office, CSO, publishes annual poverty statistics. In the latest figures, one in 20 people lives in consistent poverty, the highest rate since 2019 when it was 5.5%. Yet, the current roadmap for social inclusion, which was launched in 2020, aimed to reduce consistent poverty to 2%. This strategy is failing. The same strategy aims to reduce the number of children in consistent poverty from 92,000 to 22,000 by the end of this year. Last year, however, the number of children in poverty increased by more than over 20,000 to nearly 105,000. That is one in every 12 children. As of September, the Government’s new target is to reduce child consistent poverty to 3% or less by the end of 2030. Without a coherent strategy, why should we believe this will happen?
Following budget 2026, the Parliamentary Budget Office stated that children’s poverty will be higher this year and next year compared to 2024. While one in 20 people lives in consistent poverty, the figures are higher for groups more vulnerable to poverty. The rate is one in 12 among children; one in nine among lone parents and their children; and one in five among those unable to work due to illness or disability. National-level statistics do not give data on smaller groups, such as Travellers, Roma or people in direct provision who, we know from other sources. experience high levels of poverty and deprivation.
A link to our recent report, What Would It Take to Eliminate Consistent Poverty by 2030?, has been sent to all committee members. We hope members and their teams will take the time to read it. Unfortunately, the poverty statistics for 2024 are worse than what is included in the report from the previous year. The report summarises the experience of the 31 member organisations of the Community Platform, all of which work with communities of people who live in consistent poverty. The voices of people living in poverty are also quoted throughout the report. They include one older person who said, “I live a very isolated life because of money problems.”
Our report has six recommendations. The first is to recommit to the goal of eliminating consistent poverty. This was the national target in 2002 and 2007 but was diluted later. We are asking all politicians to recommit to a national target of the elimination of consistent poverty. We need a new approach that is more targeted towards communities that are trapped in intergenerational poverty.
Related to that, the second recommendation is that the social inclusion strategy needs to once again be an anti-poverty strategy focused on the structural reasons that so many people have insufficient money to meet their basic needs. We need more analysis in the strategy of why some groups of people, such as lone-parent families, Travellers or disabled people, always have much higher rates of consistent poverty. This committee has an especially important role in asking questions of the Minister for Social Protection about the next strategy, which his Department is currently developing.
Third, we are not here today simply to ask for across-the-board welfare increases. We have seen these before, yet the same people still get left behind. Our report recommends targeted interventions with all the groups of people who are always on the lowest incomes. Different interventions are needed for each group. Lone-bparent families need more help with childcare costs, while disabled people need extra funds to cover the costs associated with their specific disabilities. Others include people fleeing domestic abuse, users of Irish Sign Language, the long-term unemployed, family carers and so on. Each group needs targeted interventions that address their specific needs. A multidimensional approach is needed that takes account of access to public services, access to good employment, discrimination and other factors, as well as income. In particular, access to quality, affordable and sustainable public services, such as housing, education, transport, care and healthcare, would greatly reduce the cost of living.
Fourth, the Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025 emphasises that a good job is the best route out of poverty. We agree, but it cannot be the only route out of poverty. Not everyone can get a decently paid full-time job. We need to support those who can only work part time and those who cannot get paid work due to disability or care duties. Being born with a disability should not mean a life in consistent poverty, but that is the reality for too many people. We need to see a return to the focus on income adequacy that was in earlier national anti-poverty strategies. The roadmap for social inclusion also discusses the rationale for benchmarking welfare rates, which is common across Europe and the OECD. It was recommended by the Commission on Taxation and Welfare and has been called for by voluntary organisations for many years.
Fifth, international studies show that reducing wealth inequality helps to reduce poverty. Ireland has a high level of wealth inequality, with the top 10% holding two thirds of all wealth. A small fraction of the wealth held by the top 10% would eliminate consistent poverty.
Our sixth recommendation is that there should be a renewed focus on eliminating deprivation. From the latest survey on poverty, we know that one in 12 people went without heating at some stage in the last year and one in 20 could not keep their homes adequately warm; 3.7% of people could not afford a roast every week; and 1.8% could not afford protein in their meal, such as meat, fish or equivalent, every second day. This is basic poverty that should not exist in a country as wealthy as Ireland. No one should be unable to afford a minimum essential level of heat and food.
The rates of material deprivation are much higher among lone parents and their children, disabled people and others more vulnerable to poverty. While the main focus should be on ensuring everyone has an adequate income from benchmarked welfare and access to public services, there is also a role for targeted supports to ensure that no one experiences basic material deprivation, from fuel allowance through to the working family payment. It is not just about the rate of those payments but also about access to them, such as income disregards and other qualifying criteria.
We ask committee members to intervene in the development of the next national anti-poverty strategy to ensure that it is evidence-based and credible as a plan to eliminate consistent poverty by 2030. I thank them for their attention. We are happy to take any questions.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Dr. O'Connor. I now invite Ms Bayliss of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul to make her opening remarks.
Ms Louise Bayliss:
I thank the committee for the opportunity to discuss poverty and deprivation in Ireland. I am joined by my colleague Robert Thornton, who is the manager of the minimum essential standard of living, MESL, research team. This is an extremely important discussion in light of the increase in deprivation evidenced by the CSO report on its survey on income and living conditions, SILC, from March, which showed that consistent poverty increased by over a third last year such that 5% of our population are now living in consistent poverty, including almost 105,000 children.
The SILC data showed that over 15% of the general population experienced deprivation. However, some groups were more at risk. Lone parents and their children had the highest deprivation rates at 46.3%, but people with a disability, children and single-adult households also experienced much higher levels of deprivation than the general population. The MESL data for 2025 starkly illustrates the inadequacy of current social protection rates. For example, a lone-parent household with a primary or secondary school-aged child requires €555 per week to meet their needs. However, social welfare payments meet only 82% of this threshold. For households with older children, the gap is even more severe. The cost to meet the needs of a child over the age of 12 is €158 per week, yet social welfare covers just 64% of that. Single adults living alone also face a shortfall of €43 per week in urban areas and €109 per week in rural areas.
The housing crisis continues to be a major driver of poverty and deprivation. The SILC 2024 data shows that when housing costs are factored in, the at-risk-of-poverty, AROP, rate jumps from 11.7% to 17.9% in the general population. For renters in receipt of the housing assistance payment, HAP, rental accommodation scheme, RAS, payment or rent supplement, the situation is even more stark. Their at-risk-of-poverty rate rises from 21.5% before housing costs to 57.3% after housing costs. This underscores the structural impact of HAP rates not meeting the market rates, and the burden HAP top-ups place on low-income households that qualify for social housing but are expected to pay rent and a top-up.
At the sharp end of the housing crisis, in the first eight months of this year, we saw a net increase of 1,849 people in emergency accommodation. That is made up of 1,166 people in families, including 635 children and 683 adult-only households. Family homelessness is driving the homelessness crisis and this is due to economic issues around poverty, affordability and supply. In the same period, those eight months from January, there was a net increase of 299 families into homelessness, of whom 213 were lone-parent households.
Despite these challenges, budget 2026 fails to deliver a strategic response to poverty. While there were welcome changes, such as historic increases in child support payments, these are undermined by the withdrawal of temporary cost-of-living supports, an inadequate €10 per week increase in the core social welfare rates and an inadequate €5 increase in the fuel allowance, which do not keep pace with inflationary pressures, and the real purchasing power of low-income households will be reduced in 2026. It is extremely disappointing that the withdrawal of one-off payments to recipients of a disability payment was not mitigated by the introduction of a cost-of-disability payment, despite their experiencing the highest consistent poverty rate at almost 19%.
The Parliamentary Budget Office’s analysis shows that the poorest 10% of households will see a 1.8% decrease in income in 2026 when inflation and the removal of one-off supports are accounted for. Moreover, income poverty is forecast to rise across vulnerable groups. The Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, has said the budget will also have little effect on child poverty, in large part because of the removal of Government measures that had been in place to help in paying the bills. According to its post-budget analysis, at the household level, measures announced as part of budget 2026 will on average result in a 2% loss of disposable income.
In summary, the gap between household needs and income supports is widening. The MESL data confirms that many households, especially those with older children, lone parents or single adults, cannot achieve a dignified standard of living on current welfare rates. The housing crisis exacerbates this, pushing more people into poverty after housing costs are considered. Budget 2026, while offering some targeted supports, does not go far enough to address the structural inadequacies in income and housing policy. Without a commitment to benchmarking social welfare to the cost of living and addressing housing affordability, many households will face even greater hardship in the year ahead.
We look forward to the committee members' questions.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Bayliss. I now invite members to discuss the topic. I remind those participating remotely to use the raised-hand feature on MS Teams and to cancel it when they have spoken.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for the work they do. It goes without saying, but sometimes we do not say it.
We just had the Department in, when I asked a question in relation to capturing actual levels of poverty and deprivation. Will the witnesses comment on the exclusion of people who are not in a household? There are 5,000 children or more not in a household. Those are the ones in emergency accommodation, and that obviously does not include the number who might be in other forms of temporary or emergency accommodation. Is the Department missing a trick by leaving out that group? It skews the figures and makes a significant contribution if we include those who are not in a bricks and mortar household. Will the witnesses comment on the impact and about who is getting left behind by the Department's statistics? It strikes me that the Department has decided on an acceptable level of child poverty and it is going to work towards that, but I feel that it is leaving out a significant group. Is that the view of the witnesses?
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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Are these questions to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul or Community Platform?
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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They are for either Dr. O'Connor or Ms Bayliss, or both.
Dr. Nat O'Connor:
The main poverty statistics are gathered by the Central Statistics Office, CSO, which is independent of the Department of Social Protection. Its method is national survey. The Deputy is quite right to say that it may not be going into homeless services or family hubs, but it generally does a good job of balancing its survey. It also looks at welfare rate data and Revenue data to make sure it has the full income distribution. We would be quite confident that the survey on income and living conditions, SILC, data from the CSO is quite accurate and the exclusion from survey of the couple of thousand people in homeless services would not skew it that much.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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That is interesting.
Dr. Nat O'Connor:
However, the Deputy's point is important. Since it is a national survey, it does not take account of the smallest groups of people, such as people in homelessness, Travellers and Roma. There is a deeper poverty there that we have to get at in a different way, such as a different type of survey or qualitative method. That is certainly important.
Ms Louise Bayliss:
If we are looking at people in emergency accommodation without a home, there is a lack of access to cooking facilities and additional transport costs. Many people, especially young parents, are forced to give up jobs because they cannot have childcare supports. They cannot have the childminder or granny come in to mind the children. We see many people not being supported to maintain their employment. Once they lose their employment, that causes its own problems. If someone is looking to exit homelessness through HAP and does not have a job, the situation is a lot more dire. Things like wraparound supports, such as allowing family members to support people in emergency accommodation, are excluded from that. There is deeper poverty caused by not being able to buy things bulk and have a fridge to hold things. There has not been that deep survey of what it costs extra to live in emergency accommodation. There are costs. Last November, there was a good report from Focus Ireland about the circumstances of living in emergency accommodation for families. It goes into a deep analysis. It is a small report and I do not believe many families were involved in it, but it is a good quantitative study. It would be important to look at some of that information.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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Unfortunately, it is very expensive to be homeless.
Mr. Paul Ginnell:
I wish to add to what has been said about the data, the groups it captures and the groups that are missing. As Dr. O’Connor mentioned, there are other methods and ways of capturing the poverty levels for different groups that are not covered by the SILC. It is extremely important that, as a consequence of the gaps, the national strategies to address poverty and social exclusion include those groups. There is a lot of frustration among Traveller and Roma organisations that they are not captured and do not appear in strategies. It is important that strategies that address poverty include policies to target those groups and address the poverty therein.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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If they are not measured, it is easy to exclude them. There are 5,000 kids who are not part of that measurement. It strikes me that they will always be left behind if they are not included.
Ms Gayle Smith:
I thank the Deputy very much for raising this. It is extremely important. Just because groups are not included in the data does not mean that they do exist. They do exist. Another group that is not included in the data is kinship carers. There are many grandparents caring for one or more of their grandchildren because the parent cannot. They are doing so purely on their pensions because they cannot access a payment due to conditionality attached to it. That is another group that is feeling it.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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I understand. That is a point very well made.
On the issue of the inclusion or exclusion of housing costs in the calculations, the Government is going to set a target and work towards it. On the Government side, there is obviously an acceptable level of child poverty. Given that rents are rising at a faster rate than anything else that has to be purchased, should the Department be looking at ways to include rents and general housing costs?
Ms Louise Bayliss:
That is a good point. It is great that the CSO SILC data is capturing the before and after housing costs, but what we see - it is contrary to what one would imagine - is that people who are in receipt of HAP and getting support for their housing are the ones who are at most risk of poverty because of the excessive top-ups to landlords. With a few other organisations, we have asked for some type of payment to bridge that gap so that people would not fall below a certain income threshold. There is legislation around that, such that people can only pay a certain amount back to social welfare and their supplementary level does not go, but it excludes housing, which does not make sense when it is such a core payment.
I know of a woman in Cork who is paying €700 per month towards her housing, and she is on social welfare. She is absolutely living way below the poverty line. The HAP base rates have not increased since 2016 or whenever. It has been a long time and below market rates, and it is not catching up. People on social welfare or low incomes are bearing that cost. Many people are falling into rent arrears and ending up in homelessness because we are not providing that support. We have this increase where we are paying them €2,000 per week to house them in a homeless hub instead of giving them the money to support them to stay in their homes.
Dr. Nat O'Connor:
On a technical point, and as Ms Bayliss said, we now have good statistics on poverty before or after housing costs. That is across Europe with Eurostat. That is very helpful. However, when we go to calculate consistent poverty, we do not use that data. We use different data. We would need a new statistic called "consistent poverty after housing costs". That is something that could be created in the new plan or just include-----
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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We could include housing costs as part of consistent poverty because it is.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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Absolutely.
On the topic of disability, we had a motion on the cost of disability last night in the Dáil. We had a very good discussion. The motion was not opposed by the Government, but neither did the Government support it. That is up to the Government. By any reasonable calculation, the Disability Federation of Ireland, DFI, and other organisations are telling us that persons with disabilities are going to be somewhere in the region of €1,000 to €1,400 worse off as a direct result of the budget. That is exacerbated when there are children in the household. We are talking about the group most at risk. Is enough being done or can more be done to assess the impact on households with, or headed by, a person with a disability or on one-parent households? They seem to be the groups at the highest risk of poverty. We are still catching up from the implications. I recall the "7 is Too Young" campaign. The legacy of that is still being felt. Will the witnesses comment in this regard, starting with Ms Bayliss?
Ms Louise Bayliss:
What we have seen through the MESL research - Mr. Thornton may be able to address some of those issues – is that the support towards children is the lowest from social protection. Where the needs of infants and preschool children are concerned, it amounts to 115% and 113%, respectively, of their needs. It is 88% from ages five to 12 whereas only 64% of a teenager's needs are met by social protection.
What we see is that if there is a deficit in the core social protection, people are not only just dealing with their own deficit, they are also subsidising their children and that is what is causing families with children, especially older children, to fall into this steep poverty. That is why we were really pushing for a children's budget. In many ways, we did get the child support payment, which is very welcome. However, we did not get some of the really important increases we needed in the core social welfare rate. Mr.Thornton and I have been doing a few case studies and we looked for €16 on the core social welfare rate and €9.50 on the fuel allowance. That was based on the facts and the MESL research. If we had got that, in every situation, even with the increases in child support payment, our rates would have meant the family was better off. The support did get directed to the children but when the once-off payments were taken off and the structural change was not made to the core social welfare rate, it has meant that it is moving the money around the family. It is directing it towards children but the family with children is itself still worse off. Mr. Thornton may want to say something about the MESL data.
Mr. Robert Thornton:
With the MESL research, we have been looking at what families and households need for an acceptable minimum standard of living for 20 years and we have consistently found that households with older children have the highest costs. Older children cost about 60% more than their younger siblings. In fact, an older child costs more to the household than having a second adult in the household. They have significant costs. In 2025, it was around €158 for that older child. Social welfare provides about €101 per week on average so that is a €57 gap. It is only meeting 64% of their needs. The adjustments to the child support payment will make a significant difference next year but, as Ms. Bayliss was saying, with the core rates for adults and the fuel allowance not keeping up with the change in living costs, we do not see the gap improving overall for the households. While the gap is improving for the child, the child lives in a household and ultimately, the needs are still not being met.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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Does Dr. O'Connor want to come in on that?
Dr. Nat O'Connor:
Just on one aspect of what is being said there, in a household with disability and having children, often we do not have sufficient data. There is a question there for the Government if it will give more money to the CSO to do bigger surveys in order that we can actually see that fine-grain data and know what is going on. That is one choice. Another is that the Government could fund bespoke research and, again, investigate things. In the context here, we used to have a Combat Poverty Agency that was abolished in 2009, which produced a steady stream of analysis which meant that the Government could make decisions. It had that information to hand. We do not really have that any more. It has not been replaced. That is a gap we are seeing now in that we do not have enough research or enough good-quality data to let us get into the fine-grain analysis.
Mr. Paul Ginnell:
One of the things to highlight is that based on the MESL research, a large number of organisations has been calling for the benchmarking of core social welfare rates to adequacy as a key point. On top of that then you need additional payments and the additional supports we have been talking about for disabled people, for lone parents with children and so on. If we look at the poverty data, those who are unemployed have a consistent poverty rate of nearly 19%, which is among the highest of all households. Those who are unemployed cover a wide range of households, not just the groups about which we have been talking. What we need is a broad benchmark for core social welfare rates and then the additional supports on top of that for other family types that we have been talking about, and disabled people and so on, as an additional cost on top of that.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Ginnell. We will now move on to Deputy Mark Wall.
Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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I welcome all our guests. I also put on record our thanks to them for the considerable advocacy and work they do. It really is appreciated by someone like me, who runs clinics and offices. I know that goes for colleagues here as well. We see it on a daily basis.
The Community Platform's contribution summed it up by saying the group wanted an evidence-based and credible plan to address issue related to child poverty. Will Dr. O'Connor expand on that? I know they have gone into a bit of it with Deputy O'Reilly but what would he see as evidence-based and credible? I acknowledge the Community Platform has also sent us around the link to its report, What Would it Take to Eliminate Consistent Poverty by 2030?, but the witnesses might provide us with some of the headline figures on that again.
Regarding the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, I deal with the organisation, unfortunately, as many of my colleagues do, on an almost daily basis. Will Ms Bayliss give us some figures around what she is experiencing at the moment? In my experience, things are only getting worse. I presume the number of contacts, etc., the society is getting is increasing. It is important we put those numbers on record. We had officials from the Department in here before who trumpeted the Government on what it did in the budget. Unfortunately, they are gone and the witnesses are here. Maybe we should have it the other way around but that is the way it is.
We hear a lot from Government about the child and well-being unit in the Department of the Taoiseach and the way it will combat child poverty. Have any of the witnesses ever met officials from this office? If so, how often have they met them and what is their thoughts on the work the Department is doing?
Dr. Nat O'Connor:
To start with, there is a huge amount that is known about poverty. There is a huge amount of academic research. There is also a lot of research done by the 31 member organisations of the Community Platform and by other charities such as the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and the Vincentian MESL Research Centre. Therefore, we do know an awful lot about why people are in poverty. I just counted but there is 141 footnotes in the report, which will bring you to various pieces of research and annual reports of our organisations. It will also give the individual stories of people who are living in poverty. There is a wealth of stuff there. Take, for example, people who are lone parents. We know that to afford a house today, whether you are renting or paying a mortgage, you need one and a half salaries or two salaries or more. That is the reality of life in Ireland. If you have somebody who is on a single income who is doing his or her best and who is a lone parent, such a person simply cannot afford housing in Ireland. You need that extra support. We can measure how much it is because we can measure rents and how much income we are giving lone parents, and there is a gap. We leave a gap when we calculate all the payments we give to lone parents. It is as simple as that. We look at the huge report that was done by the Department on the additional costs of living with a disability. It is a very detailed report. Depending on different types of disability, it just costs people more to go about their day-to-day living. You need money to cancel out the disability before you can get started. We had organisations calling for a cost-of-disability payment but it has not been progressed. I could go on in depth but I will not. The Deputy gets the picture. We have a huge amount of research available, which we would be very happy to share in terms of that.
On the Deputy's other question about meeting the Department, the Community Platform is a member of the community and voluntary pillar, which is a vestige of the old social partnership social dialogue structures and has meetings with the Department on a quarterly basis. There is access to officials. There are opportunities to go in and present information and to hear about what the Government is doing on different payments. There is good and bad in it. There are good opportunities in that if the Government is changing a payment or an application process, we can give input and know it is read and taken seriously but they are ultimately not the policymakers. It is at the ministerial level that the direction is set and it is at the whole-of-government level. Although it is the responsibility of the Department of Social Protection, poverty really is an all-of-government responsibility because we have separate Departments for disability and for housing with another one for transport and we need to get all of those involved, and more, such as healthcare and education and so on. All of those costs-----
Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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I will come in there. There is a child poverty and well-being programme office within the Department of the Taoiseach. I know the Department of Social Protection is responsible for everything Mr. O'Connor is mentioning. My question is have the witnesses met with that officials in that office within the Department of the Taoiseach?
Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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Dr. O'Connor has not. Have any of the Community Platform members?
Mr. Paul Ginnell:
Yes, we have met them directly. As Anna Visser, who heads up that office, used to be in my position as the director of the European Anti-Poverty Network Ireland a good number of years ago, I think she understands some of the issues and challenges. It is really important that there is such a unit. A number of us in different areas would like to get things under an overarching Department like the Department of the Taoiseach, from which one can pull levers across Departments. It is a challenging place to be because this office still has to try to pull on the other Departments. It is a challenging position and role but it is important that it is there. However, we are still not seeing great progress in relation to child poverty. As has been raised earlier regarding the ESRI analysis, it looks like this budget may reduce the numbers in child poverty by about 2,000, which is a very small number. There is a still a long way to go. It is really important that such a unit exists. It is just that making it effective and implementation across the board seem to be a massive challenge. While I am speaking, I might add to that. Regarding the Department of Social Protection, three of us here, namely, Ms Bayliss, Mr. Thornton and myself, sit on the steering group for the implementation of the roadmap for social inclusion.
We play a critical role in that regard. It is important that we are there and that there are voices from the ground on those committees. However, we are still frustrated with regard to implementation. The report shows great success in terms of implementation, but we feel the reality does not reflect that. A major issue with strategies and how they are written and reported is that real progress on the ground is not reflected.
Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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I will come back on that point. We are getting a report which says that things are moving on swimmingly, but the reality being seen by Mr. Ginnell and our other guests is that this is not what is happening on the ground. Is that what Mr. Ginnell is saying?
Mr. Paul Ginnell:
Yes. There are a number of ways to see this. The data shows that there are still challenges, that there has been no progress for some groups and that poverty levels have actually increased since the commencement of this strategy. Some of the groups feel there has been no progress for them. There is a little progress in some areas. The increase in child support payments is important, as are hot school meals. There are small changes and small things are moving, but, overall, there is no real progress. That is our call in respect of the new strategy. There are over 80 commitments in the current roadmap. They have to be effective in achieving the targets that are set. There are commitments that are reported as being achieved but their impact has not moved the dial. A lot of the commitments relate to publishing strategies and establishing committees. These are inputs rather than impact-based commitments. It is key that commitments in the new strategy be written with a view to what is actually going to deliver an impact for the groups living in poverty.
Ms Louise Bayliss:
When we talk about child poverty, we have to be clear as to what we are talking about. While we often hear that 8.5% of children are living in consistent poverty, the reality breaks down very differently. The overall consistent poverty rate in Ireland is 5%. For children in two-parent families that have one to three children, it is 6%, so it is only 20% higher than the rate for the general population. For children in one-parent households, it is 11%, which is more than double.
If we are going to address child poverty, we need to look at what is it. In general, it is the issues associated with supporting a family on one income. We have done all the research. There is a great deal of research and data on lone parents. I am not excited when I hear about a new research report because I know exactly what it is going to say. It is going to say that we need affordable childcare, affordable housing, well-paid jobs with family-friendly hours, and the enforcement of child maintenance. We have such a housing crisis that people on two incomes cannot manage so there is no way a lone parent can manage.
Looking at the childcare system, there are no extra subsidies for people in childcare so we do not have the affordable childcare we need. In addition, many people cannot access childcare. The national childcare subsidy scheme is generally based on a nine-to-five model, so if you work in retail, hospitality, nursing or caring, as many lone parents do, you cannot get a subsidy. There are subsidies for childminders but there are 87 registered childminders who are eligible for that subsidy. There are more lotto millionaires than eligible childminders. You have more chance of winning the lotto than finding a childminder.
The enforcement of child maintenance is dire and this is causing child poverty. This is an easy way for the Government to target child poverty. We all worked really hard to get a child maintenance agency. That did not happen. There were some positive changes, such as the non-assessment of child maintenance, but we still need that child maintenance to support children. The ESRI Growing Up in Ireland survey showed that only 36% to 38% were regularly getting maintenance. That means a massive number of children are not being supported. The State will go after me if I do not pay my property tax. It will go to Revenue and enforce it. In the Department of Justice review of January 2024, we were promised that this would happen. Nearly two years on, we have not seen any progress on that. These are key drivers. If we are serious about addressing child poverty, these are things we could do.
At the height of the cost-of-living crisis, St. Vincent de Paul received just over 250,000 calls, the highest number of people ever to approach us. The number dropped slightly last year as a result of the one-off payments. It went down to approximately 249,000. This year, we expect to breach the 250,000 again. When Mr. Thornton and I look at the figures, we work out an assessment of what families will need in support from us. We are fearful that the number of calls will be a lot higher in 2026. I do not have a crystal ball but that is our view based on the facts and what is happening. The calls we get are very reflective of the data we see from the CSO and the MESL research. It is about people living alone on one income. That is why we asked for targeted support through the living alone allowance, which was not provided. It is also about people with a disability, lone parents and households with children. We are fairly confident that the research and the calls reflect that path quite closely. We know the solutions and we have offered them. The research is there. It is really just a question of implementation. Mr. Ginnell made a really good point. We are all on the steering group. Every time we meet, the targets that have been reached are ticked off, but it is very easy to cover all your targets without making an impact. When the strategy comes out this year, it will be really important that the targets are measurable and impactful.
Mr. Robert Thornton:
On the roadmap and the targets, something that stood out to me as I sat on the steering group is that there is sometimes a target to address, for example, income supports for lone parents in employment, and the measure tracked is not a measure for lone parents but one that supports families with children equally whether they are two-parent families or lone-parent families. Supports like that are presented as addressing a particular issue but are not as focused on that issue as they could be. This is a question we have raised at the implementation steering group meetings. It certainly could be better.
Ms Gayle Smith:
We really need to push the point that child poverty is a whole-of-government responsibility rather than one just for the Department of Social Protection. It is not good enough for other Departments to wash their hands in relation to secondary benefits. I am talking about medical cards and access to childcare, housing, education and maintenance. It is not just about the Department of Social Protection. If these are not aligned, any measure taken by the Department of Social Protection is going to be totally eroded. For example, some people might be evaluated as no longer being eligible for a medical card or that sort of thing. We need to remember that.
The other thing I will say in response to the Deputy's question is that my colleagues here today are some of the most experienced and most respected people within the community and voluntary sector. What we are talking about today is not ground-breaking. We have known all of these answers for years. The data may change and the figures may go up and down but the solutions remain the same. I have a pain in my face from saying the same things all of the time and I have only been doing this for a few years. I can imagine what it is like for the other witnesses. People in the community and voluntary sector should be used. They know their stuff. If the Department uses their knowledge, who knows what we could achieve?
Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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That is why I was so interested in how many times Ms Smith had met with the Department. That is very important point.
Mr. Paul Ginnell:
Another thing that is important to mention is that while we talk about groups experiencing high levels of poverty and deprivation, there are also communities experiencing high levels of deprivation and, often, multigenerational poverty. It is extremely important that we talk about that issue. The Deputy is probably aware of the Pobal deprivation index. Based on the 2022 census, this index showed that the number of people living in Ireland's most disadvantaged communities has grown. Those communities are still the same communities they were decades ago. The gap between those in the most disadvantaged communities and in the most affluent communities has grown. The inequality has grown. While we are talking about issues in respect of household types and so on, it is also extremely important to look at strategies to address poverty and disadvantage in very marginalised communities. This should involve a cross-community approach and address multigenerational experiences of poverty and the deep impact they have had on those communities.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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On my own behalf, and as Ms Smith put it, having a child poverty and well-being office in the Department of an Taoiseach should be able to bring all of those agencies together. Whether it is a social protection issue, a health service issue or a Department of justice issue, that office should be able to bring all of that together. I hope that, as a result of that, we will be able to work collectively across Departments. We had Department representatives at the committee recently discussing the exploration of an additional targeted child benefit payment. What is Dr. O'Connor's view on that? Will Ms Bayliss then give her view?
Dr. Nat O'Connor:
There has been a lot of research showing that child benefit itself is very valuable to low-income households, but obviously it is a universal payment so it is expensive for the national budget in terms of rolling it out or increasing it. As lot of research has been done by the ESRI and others such as Dr. Barra Roantree in Trinity College and people before him, examining the same issue which suggest that, if we really want to make a difference on child poverty, if we could have a targeted, means-tested second child benefit payment which would top up the child benefit payment, it would be cheaper for the national budget and more effective in addressing child poverty. That evidence is there and there is a lot that would support that. Other countries do not have a universal child benefit and target money more specifically at those families and children who need it most.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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What is Dr. O'Connor's view? Does he think we should go with a second-tier, means-tested benefit?
Dr. Nat O'Connor:
It really does not matter what we do as long as we are targeting. Rather than increasing the universal child benefit for everybody, it makes more sense to take that money and give three times as much to those who have least, whether that is through a top-up child benefit payment, what used to be called the increase for every qualified child in the weekly payments, the working family payment and any other payment we can get our hands on that targets that money. It is not as simple as having this model or that model. It is about looking at the data which tells us, for each of these payments, where the money is going and where the gaps are. It is not beyond our capacity to do that.
The Department of Social Protection now has a much more sophisticated computer system in that it can individualise payments, which it could not do ten or 20 years ago. It can now do that through the jobseeker's payment or through the new pension if people decide to defer it. The Department has the capacity to really tailor payments to focus them towards people and we should harness that capacity.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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On Dr. O'Connor's view of the child support payment, could there be an increase in that alone or is he working towards a separate payment?
Ms Louise Bayliss:
We would be slightly different in that, while we appreciate the talk about child benefit, the second tier payment and all of the positive things about €770 million being invested into a second tier child benefit, there are issues around it in the current model. One of the positives would be that there would be no cliff edge, where when a child turns 14, the parent suddenly loses income. All of that would be gone. There would be no loss of access to a payment if a parent suddenly worked too many hours. All of that is really positive and that aspect of the model is to be welcomed.
However, the tax and working strategy paper and the ESRI report have highlighted the fact that 40,000 children would benefit, some of them up to 50%, but 100,000 children would lose up to 16% of their income. One of the flaws we see in the current model is that it does not use the MESL research that highlights the higher cost of older children. It just puts them all at the same level. When we know younger children are well-supported by social protection and older children are not, the idea that we would get rid of that research would concern us. Given the fact that 100,000 children would be worse off, it would be a dangerous road to go down, to invest €772 million in a process where we are not sure who those 100,000 children are. Looking at the tax and working strategy paper and the data from the ESRI, the majority - not all, because some of them are in the higher incomes where they might be receiving carer's allowance and half rate child support payment - but the majority of children who are losing out are in the lower three income deciles. While it is great to have that conversation, before we would introduce something like that, we would need to do deep research and make sure and identify who those 100,000 children are and make sure we are not making the situation worse for some children.
I agree with Dr. O'Connor that it is great to have a model but we really need to be careful that we do no harm first.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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I am anxious to know a bit more about the enforcement of child maintenance that was mentioned. Have the witnesses discussed it during their meetings with the Departments? I presume the Department of justice is leading out on this. Where are the witnesses with that or what is the situation?
Ms Louise Bayliss:
Basically, we have worked very closely with the Department of Social Protection. We have met the maintenance review group, including Judge Catherine Murphy. We have welcomed the report that four of the seven members have said they did favour the maintenance enforcement agency. We would have thought that was positive. The Minister decided not to go with that but she passed it over to the Department of justice.
We have not had a lot of engagement with the Department of justice, but when it did issue the strategy, which was in January 2024, there were some really strong recommendations, including using Revenue to collect the maintenance, having guidelines and all of these really positive moves. We have not heard anything in the past 20 months or so and that is disappointing. We have all of the research from the ESRI and the Growing up in Ireland survey that only slightly more than a third of children are being supported. It is a lever.
There are two benefits of child maintenance. One is that there is a reduction in child poverty when it is enforced properly, with very little cost to the State. The second benefit, and almost equally as important, is that there is better engagement with the parent who is paying maintenance, if he is paying maintenance. That research is there and evidenced. That would be a benefit not just financially but in terms of the connection with the two parents. That is an important note.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Bayliss and will go back to Deputy O'Reilly.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Chair and the witnesses for their time. In 2018, Leo Varadkar launched a child poverty strategy with a package of measures, he said, to tackle early childhood poverty. That was a ten-year strategy to take us up to 2028, so we are not there yet. There was another cross-departmental group in 2023, and there is another one now in 2025. It is getting a bit difficult to have faith in the strategies that are just announcements. In the intervening time between 2018 and now, from what I have seen, rates of consistent child poverty have been going in the wrong direction and have been increasing.
I am not trying to put words in anyone's mouth but it strikes me we have a fair amount of research. There is a fair amount of data available. More data should be available in terms of the impact of housing costs and including those. That is relatively simple to achieve given that the people who are in emergency accommodation, the children specifically, are likely to be engaged with the Department of Social Protection. They are a group that are slightly easier to reach than some who exist on the margins.
I do not doubt the bona fides of any politician who says they want to tackle child poverty. To be honest, who would not? The people with the power to do it seem to never have enough data to be able to actually do it and always seem to be short of one report or one statistic. Given the breadth of data available now and if we have sufficient data, do the witnesses think it is time we moved on from analysing it and had a measure or whatever you want to call it, such as additional child benefit or whatever the mechanism? I agree with Dr. O'Connor that the money in cash transfers is what helps people to get out of poverty. That is just a fact and we can put any kind of label we want on it. The latest information from the Department and the Minister is that it is doing an exploration of a targeted child benefit rate. Is there a sufficiency of research for people to be able to just take it and start to actually try to reverse and stabilise the trend of increasing child poverty and maybe even improve those levels, given the level of surplus we have in the State?
Mr. Robert Thornton:
Yes, obviously there is a huge amount of research and evidence. In terms of the second tier of child benefit proposal, the one piece of analysis that is missing is the change from the structure of the current system, which takes account of that cost for the older child, to a system that does not do that anymore.
That has been a positive change in the system in recent years and should not be done away with lightly. There is a huge breadth of data available. Fundamentally, what we have seen in the past number of years and what we would say in response to the approach during the cost-of-living crisis is there were adjustments to core rates of social protection and income supports in work more or less and these were topped up with a series of one-off payments and temporary measures. That pushed down the road the problem of indexing and benchmarking the underlying core rates to some degree of adequacy. It is welcome we are no longer topping up temporarily but, rather, giving certainty. The certainty is not at a high enough level, however. The measure fundamentally needed to address child poverty and poverty overall because children do not live in a household by themselves - a child in poverty is in a household in poverty - is to address to the adequacy of underlying incomes rates and ensure people have enough money to live on. Then, we can look at other groups and circumstances that need further assistance. Having fundamental rates at an adequate level is an important first step.
Mr. Paul Ginnell:
It is exactly that point. Children do not live in isolation; they live in households. We mentioned benchmarking core welfare rates to adequacy and on top of that looking at additional supports needed in child income supports and so on or for other household types. We also mentioned it is not all about income. It has to be initially but there has to be long-term investment in childcare, housing, transport and other areas people need. In Ireland, a lot of people need money in their pockets because they pay for these services but if one invests in good-quality accessible public services, it reduces the amount of work the Department of Social Protection and other Departments have to do to chase those costs. That has be part of the picture. In a broader strategic way, we have to look at inequality in society generally. Wealth inequality was mentioned at the beginning. It is important that we look at inequality in our society, its impact and how to address it. It has a wide range of impacts on how people understand the need for this type of investment that ensures everybody can live a decent life.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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We are all better off when everyone can live a decent life.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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I am aware of it, yes.
Dr. Nat O'Connor:
On a technical point, the Irish welfare system is very much based on the British welfare system, which is a residual system - the idea that you means test people and give them just the minimum amount. That is how the system is designed whereas a lot of European systems are designed to give people a higher income. If they have given people "too much" income, they tax it back again. It is the integration of the welfare and tax systems where one can be generous with welfare because if somebody is given a high enough amount, they will pay some of it back in taxes and it balances out. Our system is really focused on means testing, which is a huge administrative cost and creates all sorts of anomalies and barriers. There is a different means test for housing and the medical card. People are worried; they get €5 on the pension but then they lose their access to a medical card. There is a constant administrative process to handle that. In other jurisdictions, there can be more generosity because the tax system is more robust to take back any excess. If one wants real structural change that would help us to eliminate poverty, that kind of integration would help so that money can be channelled to people who need it, knowing any excess money will come back to the State.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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They accidentally got an extra euro. I have a question about child maintenance. There are different disregards across local authorities for the calculation of child maintenance. I have already discussed this with the Department and the Minister. To be fair to him, his Department does not include it but should that be universal? Does it cause issues? From my read, it is not consistent across local authorities. Even within local authorities it is sometimes not consistent.
Ms Louise Bayliss:
It is not consistent. Ms Smith and I as part of the National One Parent Family Alliance have written to local authorities. We have received a mixed response. I think Waterford said the reason it was calculating that way was because of guidelines issued in 2018 or so. We told the Minister, Deputy Browne, it was his regulation and asked if he could reverse it so people can get the benefit. In circumstances where maintenance is not being paid but the court order is being used to calculate, HAP rents are being charged and they are not even getting the maintenance, so we asked for that to be looked at but we are still waiting.
We are concerned about children in emergency accommodation but children in direct provision are not even getting child benefit. That was promised for two years in a row in budgets 2025 and 2024. There was no mention of it in budget 2026. We have to remember those children in direct provision who have absolutely no money to survive on. They are not getting enough. The will was there, it is just not being implemented. I could not have a conversation on child poverty without raising the issue of those children.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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That is a point very well made. The will was there to include it in a press release.
Ms Gayle Smith:
On the point about local authorities, two local authorities currently disregard child maintenance when assessing rent - Dublin City Council and Cork County Council recently. All the rest count child maintenance as means even through the Department of Social Protection sees it as a child poverty prevention measure. I do not always have good things to say about Dublin City Council but it was the first. It was not even asked. When the Minister last year made that decision to disregard child maintenance as means, Dublin City Council made the move itself to follow on with that. Its HAP tenants and social housing tenants are not assessed with child maintenance, which is a great help.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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Ms Bayliss made the point that it does not matter if maintenance has been paid or not so long as it is court ordered. You might never see a shilling of it and it is still counted. That is the biggest issue.
Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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They can see your bank statements and that it does not go in.
Ms Louise Bayliss:
Many people have court-ordered maintenance because the Department of Social Protection at that time said you had to go to court to get a court order or you could not get the one-parent family allowance. Many knew they were getting maintenance orders that would never be paid but had to do it to get their social protection.
Maria McCormack (Sinn Fein)
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Apologies; I was late. I had car troubles. I have read all the notes. I am from Laois; I am conscious Deputy Aird may have asked these questions already. I apologise if he has. We have no food banks in Laois. It is desperately needed. For a couple of years, we have been trying to get it off the ground. What steps are being taken to help this situation? Child poverty and food poverty are big problems in Laois.
Ms Louise Bayliss:
To be honest, I do not know about the operation of food banks. My point, and I think it would also be the point of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, is that food banks, while necessary, are a temporary thing. We would like an increase in core social welfare payments so that nobody would need go to a food bank. Food banks are nearly an admission we are not providing enough food for people. We do not see that as a dignified response. While we provide food banks and support them, it is not where my emphasis and advocacy would be. It would be on making sure people do not ever need to go to food banks.
Maria McCormack (Sinn Fein)
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It is unfortunate at the moment that we have this problem. We did not get an increase and social welfare payments just do not match the cost of living. I volunteer with Portlaoise Action to Homelessness. It mainly focuses on going to Dublin two days a week to feed the homeless but we have a lot of food poverty. In the interim, do the witnesses have any advice? I know it is not the long-term solution. Of course we need more social welfare.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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If you could sent it through the clerk, that would be great.
Mr. Paul Ginnell:
I would reinforce what Ms Bayliss said. Our position on food banks is it is an unfortunate necessity for people that they have to depend on food banks but it is an admission of the failure of the system to provide people with an adequate income.
That is all it is. More food banks are, unfortunately, a greater sign that the system is broken.
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Ginnell for that. Is Senator McCormack okay with that?
John Paul O'Shea (Cork North-West, Fine Gael)
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We are out of time anyway. I thank the Community Platform which represents 30 organisations. Other members have said it but, as Chair, I want to say we are very grateful for this group. We deal with the 30 organisations daily through our own work. I thank the Community Platform for coming in this morning and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul for being part of our committee and discussing poverty in general but also child poverty. I thank the witnesses for their contributions and for providing the briefing materials in advance. This has made our job a whole lot easier in coming to conclusions on where we are at with child poverty.