Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Department of Social Protection’s primary role is to provide income supports to sustain an adequate standard of living and to prevent poverty. It is for that reason that the Government has protected primary weekly rates of welfare since it came into office, notwithstanding the economic difficulties. In 2013, welfare payments and other social transfers, excluding pensions, reduced the at-risk-of-poverty rate from 38.4% to 15.2%, thereby lifting almost a quarter of the population out of relative income poverty. Ireland is among the best performing EU member states in that regard.

The school meals programme provides funding towards the provision of food services to some 1,600 schools and organisations, benefiting more than 205,000 children. A total of €39 million has been provided for the scheme in 2015, which is an increase of €2 million on that provided in the previous year.

A new European initiative, the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived, FEAD, now supports the provision of food and basic consumer products to people considered to be most at risk. A total of almost €27 million in funding is available over the period to 2020, of which 65% is for food. I expect the programme will be operational during the third quarter of this year.

Under its social inclusion initiative funding schemes, the Department supports Healthy Food for All, a national charitable organisation which works to increase access to and availability of affordable healthy food by groups of people on a low income.

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