Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Altogether, the Department of Social Protection will spend almost €3 billion in 2015 in providing income support for families through child benefit, qualified child increases for people on social welfare, family income supplement, the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance and, as I said, increased resources for the schools meals programme, which is specifically aimed at children. Child income supports and other social transfers are very effective in reducing child poverty. The 2013 CSO survey of income and living conditions - the SILC - showed 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, and the SILC data is based on much of 2012 as well as 2013. That was an incredibly difficult point in the crash in banking and construction that had happened under the previous Government.

These results show Ireland as being among the best-performing member states of the EU in this regard. Commentators looking at Ireland have repeated this over and over again. I would also point out to the Deputy that these studies do not take into account of additional benefits which households on social welfare may have, such as access to a medical card or access to social housing and, therefore, to a differential rent, which may be more modest than that for people at work who are renting privately.

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