Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

That is acknowledged generally throughout society. In terms of trying to get to individual families and deal with them, the Department does that daily. The National Action Plan for Social Inclusion, 2007 — 2016, set out to do that. I gave Deputy Shortall the figures. The object of the plan is to reduce consistent poverty to between 2% and 4% by 2012, with the aim of eliminating it altogether by 2016. It is a major priority with the programme for Government and across all strands of the Departments and it is reasonable to suggest there is much better co-operation between the Departments in trying to ensure the different services are provided or correlated properly to the maximum advantage of the individual families and children who find themselves in the difficulties we are discussing here.

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