Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The figure was 8% for 2014 and, as we will not have the figure for 2016 until the end of 2017, we will not know how much lower it is than 8% until then. These will be difficult targets to meet and understanding them is a science in itself. Interestingly, the reason the number of children we have to take out of poverty has gone up from 70,000 to 97,000 is not because living conditions for children have fallen in that period but because of the rise in median incomes. For example, if the pension for pensioners is increased but nothing is done for children, child poverty increases because of the relativities involved. If, for example, we restored pay for young teachers, nurses and gardaí, most of whom do not have children in poverty, that actually increases the child poverty figure. What we do not want to do is meet the targets by suppressing people's incomes; we want to reach them by improving people's living conditions. That is why the focus has to be on services.

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