Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The tone of the Taoiseach's response is not unexpected but it is almost depressing. The measures his Government is taking are clearly not working for hundreds of thousands of people across the State but in particular for those families headed by a lone parent.

The Irish Timescarried a very interesting series on child poverty. If the Taoiseach has not read some of the articles I would recommend them to him. One of the articles compared the standard of living of a mother of two from the midlands with an appropriate counterpart living in another jurisdiction. The article made for incredible reading. The woman concerned is at work. Such are her struggles to ensure her family can get by that she rations the number of times the kids are allowed to boil the kettle. Can one imagine having to count the number of times that a family can boil a kettle in its house? I put it to the Taoiseach that this is how tight things are. Many of the interventions cited by the Taoiseach are, in effect, subsidies for low-pay employment.

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