Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Much of the talk and media commentary in recent days has been about constitutional issues but I would like to ask the Taoiseach if social issues featured in the discussions. I noticed a report published in theBelfast Telegraphon 28 June which indicated that there are now 100,000 children living in poverty conditions in Northern Ireland - some 25% of all children in that state. The report indicated that 395,100 persons, or 22% of the overall population of Northern Ireland, in the year 2014-2015 were living below the poverty line. If I was asking the question of Sinn Féin, I would ask Sinn Féin quite sharply how it defends being part of a government and presiding over a system that delivers that level of poverty within the state but my question is to the Taoiseach. Obviously, we, on this side of the House, would argue that the solution is for working-class people, North and South, Catholic and Protestant, to organise to fight and to challenge the social conditions, the austerity and the capitalist property relations that lie behind them. My question to the Taoiseach is whether these issues featured as part of his discussions and what solutions, if any, did he discuss with the political parties in the North as a means of addressing them.

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