Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

I am not in a position to disclose tomorrow's budget. One child in consistent poverty is one too many, let alone 96,000. Deputy Shortall raised an important point and it gets to the nub of the matter. The issue for many agencies and voluntary organisations is not just about money from my Department. There is a range of issues on how the agencies operate and how we can get unemployed people from families that have been consistently unemployed and single and lone parents into the workforce. Many voluntary agencies are talking about this matter. As I said in my response, that is being worked through to target the resources, including human resources in my Department working with the agencies to interact on a one-to-one basis with these people, which is a huge undertaking. We aim to explain how these people are there and how we can get them to move on, particularly into some form of employment. This offers them the best way out of poverty and can have a significant impact on how they see the world and their lives, how they live their lives and the quality of their and their children's lives. Over the past number of years, the Government has put significant, targeted resources into working with all concerned to achieve that. We will continue to build on that in tomorrow's budget.

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