Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

What the UNICEF report, the OECD report and all of the other reports show is that the worst cause of poverty among children is when the adults in the household lose their job or their business. Therefore, the best outcome one can get for children is that the adults in the household in which the children reside are in a position to get work, either on a full-time or a part-time basis, depending on their care responsibilities. What we had, particularly during the period of the Celtic tiger, and I do not know why, was a steady and significant number of households - one of the highest levels in the EU - where none of the adults in the house was at work, whether it was a lone-parent family or a two-adult household. All of the statistics show that it is joblessness rather than the social welfare system which results in the biggest transfer of income support from people at work to people out of work.

As the OECD has acknowledged time and again, Ireland has the highest rate of jobless households in the European Union. We must focus on helping adults of working age living in households with children into part-time or full-time work or in setting up a business in order that they can enhance their income. Finding employment for parents is the best way to get children out of poverty.

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