James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy has made many valid points. Much of this comes from outside my Department but, nonetheless, I am concerned. However, I am pleased that Government has created more than 130,000 new jobs and unemployment has fallen below 9% for the first time since 2008. We all acknowledge that the best way out of poverty is a job and to have financial independence and that is why many of the provisions we have put in place are to address this.

From my Department's point of view, it is about increasing the employability chances for children when they become adults to break that intergenerational poverty trap and that starts really early in life. It now starts in the ECCE programme at three years of age, so that children go to school with the same reading skills as other children because, perhaps through disadvantage, they did not get that opportunity.

An important aspect of getting people back to work, or enabling people to go back to work, is child care, where we are putting an initiative in place. In that initiative, which will be developed this year, we will replace the community child care subvention, CCS, programme and the four training and employment child care, TEC, programme with an entirely new scheme that will be simple and easily accessible for parents. Everybody has agreed that the most vulnerable should be looked after first. Therefore, the income threshold will start at a particular point and increase as more funding becomes available. More and more people, therefore, will not encounter that barrier to going to work because of the cost of child care. From the children's point of view, if they get a good start in early life, their ability to finish education will improve. The school completion programmes is to support that and the ABC programme allows them a better chance of a job later in life.

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