Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Whitmore for bringing forward this motion and I thank the other Deputies for their thoughtful and well-considered contributions to this debate.

Perhaps nothing encapsulates the inequality and unfairness of our society more than issue of child poverty. Up the road in the Rotunda, some children will be born today and during this week into situations where they will virtually have every opportunity in the world open to them. There will be others who, by chance of birth, will be born into poverty. The unfairness and wrongness of that should eat us all to the core. For children born into that situation, their window of opportunity starts to tighten almost immediately. It is our job to slow that tightening to keep that window of opportunity open.

I feel very strongly about this issue. I am glad to have an opportunity to work on this issue over the next few years and glad to be working with my colleague for some years, the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, on the issue of child poverty.

A range of important issues have been raised throughout the course of this debate. I would like to be clear that from my point of view and that of the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and the Government as a whole, tackling child poverty is a Government priority, especially in the context of the potentially destructive effects that will come from the impacts of the Covid crisis, the full extent of which we have yet to learn.

As the House may be aware, the programme for Government commits to the publication and implementation of a successor to the Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures strategy, as mentioned earlier by my colleague, the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman. Continuing to address child poverty will be a central component of this strategy, according to an ambitious target-led strategy, and I welcome the commitment from the Minister in that regard today.

The programme also commits to implement the current First 5 strategy for babies, young children and their families, which outlines a number of poverty prevention measures. We have also committed to work across Government to address food poverty. The school meals programme is a key component of this and with the co-operation of our schools around the country, this programme continued during the summer months and during the pandemic. I was also pleased to see that my colleague, the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, recently announced a €152 million package for the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance which has been extended to include parents receiving the pandemic unemployment payment.

The current target in relation to child poverty is to lift 70,000 children out of consistent poverty by 2020, which would represent a reduction of at least two thirds on the 2011 level. Significant progress has been made in addressing child poverty in recent years, although I acknowledge, as others have, that significant work remains if we are to achieve a truly meaningful reduction. It is important to acknowledge progress because it gives us hope and makes us realise that this is achievable. In that regard, it is important to mention a couple of figures. In 2013, the consistent poverty rate for children peaked at 12.7% or 150,000 children. By 2018, we had reduced that to 7.7% or 92,000 children. This means that 58,000 children, or over one third of the peak total, were taken out of consistent poverty between 2013 and 2018. This is achievable. The 2018 rate of 7.7% was the lowest since 2008, when the rate was 6.2%.

The previous four budgets have introduced a number of measures that will continue to have a direct and positive impact on poverty, particularly child poverty. The full impact of these measures is still being realised, although I acknowledge that Covid-19 creates further challenges.

In terms of my own direct responsibility, the Roadmap for Social Inclusion was adopted in January of this year and is the latest in a series of national inclusion strategies dating back to 1997 and the time of the Combat Poverty Agency, to which Deputy Connolly referred. This overarching statement of Government strategy acknowledges a range of sectoral plans with social inclusion as a core objective. The roadmap sets targets against a number of key aspects of social inclusion with a view to positioning Ireland as a top performer within Europe. With regard to child poverty, the target is to reduce the at risk of poverty or social exclusion rate for those under 18 years sufficiently to move Ireland into the top five EU countries by 2025. To this end, the roadmap establishes a series of commitments, one of which is to continue to target a reduction in poverty among children and families on low incomes as part of the annual budget process and to establish a report on a new target in respect of child poverty. As part of the governance process underpinning this strategy, I will chair the interdepartmental steering group tasked with monitoring progress against each of the 66 unique commitments outlined in the roadmap.

I have to agree that having some 92,000 children in consistent poverty is not acceptable.

That is why recent budgets have focused on improvements for families and children through various measures, such as targeted increases in social welfare payments and supports for families; increases in the weekly qualified child rates; increases in the income thresholds for the working family payment; increases in the earnings disregard for the lone parent and jobseeker's transition payments; the roll-out of the national childcare scheme to support parents in employment and those who wish to return to employment to take up education or training opportunities; the extension of the free GP care to children under eight years; the introduction of free dental care for children up to six years; the availability of free universal preschool provision for two years through the early childhood care and education scheme; and the introduction of paternity and parental leave to support parents of young children. There is also the continued implementation of the DEIS action plan to address and prioritise the educational needs of children and young people from disadvantaged communities from preschool to second level. In the context of the pandemic and what this Government has achieved, this has been a crucial anti-poverty measure to get the schools open and keep them open. Everyone will agree that has been an important achievement in recent months.

When I have the opportunity to speak, I like to bring the voice of the people we talk about into the debate as much as possible. I thank Deputy Gannon for this in particular. I will read some short testimonies from the Children's Rights Alliance report on children in homelessness. I have asked my colleague, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, to take heed of these accounts. This is the personal testimony from Veronica, aged 26:

It was costing me €6 every morning on a lunch for Alice going to school and I’d have to buy that in the garage. So I was driving to the garage, getting the breakfast because I had no fridge I couldn’t store anything. Then coming up to the Christmas I was trying to save a few quid for Santa so I went and bought some yoghurts and butter and cheese and I left it in my car because it was freezing, so that was my fridge. There was a communal kitchen but there were no locks on anything, so if you went and done your shopping and there was another family there that didn't, they would help themselves to your food. When you came back later in the afternoon everything was gone. Eventually I bought a kettle, I boiled eggs in it and steamed the baby's bottles with it, and we used it for soup, we had soup and rolls.

I will read one more, the personal testimony of Jessica, aged 24:

When we were in the hotel and moving around, Clare's behaviour got very, very bad you know. She was very, I don’t like to say bold but she was very bold, you know she was just acting up all the time like, attention-seeking and screaming, all this stuff. She lashed out all the time, you know we’d come back to the hotel, and then, if we were after booking out and booking back in, we’d change room, like they’d give us a different room. Clare wouldn’t understand. She’d be on the floor in the hallway shouting, 'This is our house!' You know so I had to kind of explain to her somehow like, 'No we’re in this one today', it wasn’t nice to try to explain that to her.

I reaffirm my commitment and that of the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and the Government to tackling child poverty. The most recent data from 2018 show how far we have come but also how much further there is to go. We have set ourselves an ambitious target which we remain committed to. Strategies such as the Roadmap for Social Inclusion and the successor, Better Outcomes, Brighter Future, will help us to achieve the target.

See this speech in context