Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)

The provision for the various income support systems in 2012 will be a matter for consideration by the Minister for Social Protection and the Government in the budgetary process. I appreciate the Deputy's point about the role of child benefit payments and the support it offers to families, particularly the families who are most vulnerable and most marginalised. I will work with other Departments to ensure that we give the very best supports to children and families and protect the vulnerable within the extraordinarily difficult financial situation which faces the Government.

It is important to have a look at that report. We hear a great deal of bad news but it is encouraging that the report awards Ireland an overall score of seven out of a possible eight points for its overall performances. It places Ireland in the better than the OECD average overall, along with Iceland, Norway and Sweden. There is good news in this report but I certainly take the Deputy's point about child poverty. It is clear that children are vulnerable to child poverty when there is unemployment in a household. This is why we must focus on job creation. Children are poor in the context of their families and there is a clear and strong link between poverty and unemployment and children in jobless households are three times more likely to experience consistent poverty than children in general. I take the point that there is no room for complacency.

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