Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

The proposal has certainly not been abandoned. As its cost was estimated to be €775 million, it is obviously not possible to develop it at this stage. It is important that any change we might make would not preclude us from going in this direction in the future. This country's levels of child poverty have decreased significantly in recent times. A paper that was produced by Barnardos yesterday, which was compiled using the standard European measurement, suggested that there has been a significant decline in child poverty levels, from 27% to below 20%, over recent years.

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