Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have a strong personal commitment to reducing child poverty. It is a key priority for the Government. When we set ourselves a target, in 2014, of reducing consistent poverty in children by two thirds of the 2011 level, it was a challenging ambition. It would have meant lifting 70,000 children out of poverty by 2020. This baseline target against 2011 means that today we need to lift 102,000 children out of consistent poverty by 2020.

Consistent poverty means that these children are living in households with incomes below 60% of the national average income and experience deprivation according to official Government poverty indicators. We have made some modest progress. From a peak of 152,000 children in consistent poverty in 2014, we have seen a 9% decrease in 2015 of 13,680 children living in poverty. This downward trend continued with an 11.1% rate of consistent poverty in 2016, a further reduction of 6,320 or 4.5%, with a total of 132,000 children deemed to be in consistent poverty. Figures for 2017 will be available in November. However, it will be extremely difficult to reach our ambitious target of lifting more than 100,000 children out of poverty by 2020.

My Department works closely with the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, which has the lead role in co-ordinating strategies on poverty and the national action plan for social inclusion. With the support of the advisory council on Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures, which worked with non-governmental organisations and a range of Departments, we published a valuable paper on a whole-of-Government approach to tackling child poverty last October. This identifies six priority areas for action, namely, providing universal access to general practitioner care for those aged under 18 years; reducing the cost of education; housing; affordable childcare; labour activation; and provision of in-work benefits. My focus has been on affordable childcare.

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