Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his response. The problem is that when we have raised the issue of poverty, the Minister has said on a number of occasions that our figures were outdated. These figures are for the year before last, from a time when employment had increased quite significantly.

Despite that significant increase in employment, is the Minister disappointed that consistent poverty seems to have hardly moved between 2014 and 2015 from 8.85% down to 8.7%? The at-risk-of-poverty figure went from just over 17% to just under 17%. There was a marginal improvement in consistent child poverty from 12.7% to 11.5%. However, the at-risk-of-poverty figure for children showed very small movement from 20.3% to 19.5%.

The figures for consistent poverty for lone parents rose and the consistent poverty figure for people who were out of work due to disability or illness increased quite dramatically. Would the Minister agree with me that the increases in employment that we have seen have not given rise to a concomitant reduction in poverty figures, which says something about the quality of many of the jobs created?

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