David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)

The Minister says he will ignore relative income poverty and he will not answer the question about what he will do to address poverty. Does he agree that 148,000 children are in consistently poor homes — 14.6% of all children — according to the latest CSO data from 2003, as reported in the most recently published ending child poverty policy document produced by the Combat Poverty Agency?

Will the Minister tell us what "consistently poor" means and what he intends to do about this? I do not want to know what he has done, I want to know what he will do about it. These are up to date figures from the Combat Poverty Agency. Will he continue to ignore relative income poverty? Is it Government policy to ignore statistics from the Combat Poverty Agency on children in relative income poverty?

See this speech in context