Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Child benefit is a universal payment made to families with children. It assists those families with the cost associated with raising children. It is paid to almost 1.2 million children in over 600,000 families. The estimated expenditure in 2014 was €1.9 billion.

In budget 2015, the Government committed a further €96 million for children, including an increase of €5 per month in child benefit. A total of €72 million extra will be spent on child benefit in 2015 with €22 million provided for expenditure on the new back to work family dividend, and an additional €2 million on the school meals programme. Altogether, the Department of Social Protection will spend €3 billion in providing income support for families through child benefit, qualified child increases for welfare recipients, that is €30 per week per child for somebody on a social welfare income, family income supplement and the back to school clothing and footwear allowance.

The CSO SILC release for 2013, which takes the data from 2012 and 2013, which was the height of the crisis we inherited, shows that 11.7% of children were in consistent poverty, a slight but not statistically significant increase on the 2012 rate. On the other hand, the at-risk-of-poverty rate for children decreased from 18.8% in 2012 to 17.9% in 2013. I have already commented in the House today on the importance of social transfers in Ireland in reducing poverty.

The figures for 2013 show that social transfers reduced the at-risk-of-poverty rate for children from 45.5% to 17.9%, thereby lifting a quarter of all children out of poverty. This equates to a poverty reduction effect of 60.7% in 2013, an increase on 2012 when the poverty reduction effect was 50.1%. Ireland is among the best performing member states in the EU in this regard.

The economic recovery this Government has delivered is not an end in itself; what is critical is that it enables us to secure a social recovery, starting with raising living standards. That process started this month, as tax reductions for all workers and the €5 increase in child benefit took effect for all families. Child benefit will remain as a universal payment because of its crucial importance to mothers in particular and to men parenting their children on their own, and I intend to increase it again in the budget later this year.

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