Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have read with interest the Children’s Rights Alliance report card for 2015 and its recommendations for Government action to tackle child poverty. In my view, the role of social transfers, which I referred to earlier, is not given enough weight in the report. The at-risk-of-poverty rate for children has fallen for the first time in three years by nearly 1 percentage point, from 18.8% in 2011 to 17.9%. This compares with an at-risk-of-poverty rate for children in 2005, when the economy was doing extraordinarily well, of 23.1%. That improvement is outlined in the SILC report, which is based on data from the preceding year, 2013, and reflects data from the period of the greatest difficulty in the economy.

Budget 2015 increased expenditure on children by €96 million and I increased child benefit by €5 per month. Other child-specific measures included the new back-to-work family dividend and an additional €2 million on the school meals programme. The Department published the social impact assessment of budget 2015, which found that for the first time since the economic crisis, welfare and income tax policies will result in an increase in average household incomes of 0.7%. It also found that households with children - both earning and non-earning households - generally gain more than those households without children. The Government has agreed a child-specific poverty target which aims to lift 70,000 children out of poverty by 2020, equivalent to a reduction of two thirds on the 2011 rate. Following a national seminar to discuss how the target would be implemented, the Department is now finalising an implementation plan for a whole-of-Government approach to child poverty, with other Departments and following consultation with the Children’s Rights Alliance and other children’s organisations.

As I said, this Government will deliver a social as well as an economic recovery to ensure that every family, every community and every individual will benefit from the recovery that is now underway. I am very confident that as a society, we will be able to achieve the child poverty target by 2020.

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