Willie Penrose (Westmeath, Labour)

A more apt title for the study would be "one day at a time" from the point of view of many young children who are experiencing poverty. Despite our affluence, is it not an indictment of our society that a report from the Combat Poverty Agency tracing a period over six or seven years indicates that just under one fifth of children, or 182,000 children, experience poverty over an extended period of between five and eight years. That illustrates a significant failure to intervene in a focused and targeted way to ensure that statistic becomes obsolete. Income poverty is measured as being below 60% of the median income threshold for society as a whole. Is it not also a fact that the age of children and family size tend to affect the length of time for which a child experiences poverty?

Given that a quarter of all our children experience poverty for one to two years and one-fifth remain locked in poverty for between five and eight years, the question must be asked why all those dramatic initiatives, targets and interventions have failed to singularly address an issue that blackens the name of our country across the world? We are now noted to have significant elements of child poverty. What targeted policies will be introduced to arrest and eliminate this trend? One child in poverty is one too many in a country that is awash with cash. Why is this number of children experiencing poverty?

The report reveals that a child whose parents did not go to secondary school, in other words, whose education was confined to basic primary level, is 23 times more likely to live in poverty compared to a child whose parents have achieved third level education. Should the focus in this respect not be on education? A multifaceted approach is required to tackle this problem. The welfare benefits and the child care allowances the Minister mentioned are all well and good but they have failed to reach the target. Is it not important to increase access to employment, to remove disincentives and poverty traps, to have more pre-school education and to have affordable child care at pre-school and post school level? We need to target child poverty. In my view and that of the Labour Party, every child has the right to be brought up free from poverty, to enjoy a fulfilling childhood and to realise his or her full potential. That is what the Labour Party believes and that is what should be written into the Constitution if it means anything today.

The Minister should use this report. It is useful in that it should enable us to develop policies and measures that target the root causes of poverty. Let us not have only documents on tackling this issue and some social partners coming out and blowing their trumpet about what they have achieved. They have achieved nothing while child poverty is at the current level. Have we a national partnership agreement and, if so, what elements of it will tackle child poverty? What elements of the national anti-poverty strategy will tackle it? What provisions are there in the national development plan to address it?

What is needed to tackle this problem is a co-ordinated strategy at Government level, joined-up thinking and joined-up Government. The involvement of the Office of the Minister for Children is required. The Minister for Education and Science has a key role to play in early intervention to support the education and development of young children. The involvement of the Minister's department is critical together with the involvement of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. We need to ensure that the transition from welfare to work is supported to eliminate poverty traps, especially for children of lone parents. We need flexible child care services, education and training supports, flexible employment arrangements and a proper balance between parenting and working. I suggest to the Minister that a co-ordinated approach be adopted to eliminate child poverty once and for all.

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