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

I do not propose to accept the amendment which calls for an annual analysis of child poverty rates and a report thereon to be laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas and issued to the Joint Committee on Social Protection. There is already independent annual reporting of child poverty rates through the CSO in the survey on income and living conditions, SILC. The survey is carried out as part of an EU-wide survey overseen by EUROSTAT and allows for cross-European, country by country comparisons. It forms the basis for further extensive official reporting on child poverty rates through the publication of the annual social inclusion monitor, the annual national reform programme and the Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures annual report. The purpose of my Department's social inclusion monitor is to report officially on progress towards meeting the national social targets for poverty reduction. The monitor is published online and deposited in the Oireachtas Library for the consideration of the Members of both Houses. Social Inclusion Monitor 2014 is the latest such report and was published in April this year. It includes a specific section on the child social targets and related indicators for children and young people. The findings of the monitor are used in reporting on progress towards meeting the national social targets for poverty reduction in the national reform programme. There is also independent annual commentary on child poverty in the Children's Rights Alliance's annual report card and other social monitoring by groups such as TASC.

I do not believe it would be useful at this time to provide for further analysis and reporting of the same data. However, I am attuned to the arguments made by Deputies John Brady and Willie O'Dea that we need the figures more promptly because we want to make decisions based on up-to-date information rather than information that is very much out of date. We are using the poverty and inequality statistics from 2014 and a lot has changed in the economy since. The 2015 figures are not yet available and I am told by the CSO that they may not be available until the new year. Therefore, we will receive the 2015 figures in early 2017, which is not really satisfactory. Obviously, one cannot get the 2016 figures in 2016 because they are collated over the course of and to the end of a year, but one would hope to receive end-of-year statistics within a quarter or two. We should have received the 2015 statistics in the middle of 2016 and should receive the 2016 statistics in the middle of 2017, but the statistics are collected by the CSO, not by my Department. They are collected independently. Inserting something in social welfare legislation which would require us to do it would not make it happen. We do not have the capacity to take over the job of the CSO and start collecting and reporting on the statistics. That is not our role but that of the CSO, as it should be. If we were to insert a provision into legislation which would ask us to do something we could not do, we might as well ask ourselves to collect trade or other statistics and publish them annually. That is the function of the CSO. I will engage with it to see if there is anything we can do to have this information published more promptly in order that we could act on it. The effect of the amendment is undeliverable. Deputy John Brady is asking the Department to become a statistics agency, but we are not in that business. It is not what we do and we should not do it.

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