Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCeann Comhairle. I also thank the Minister for facilitating this debate on the initiative of the Ombudsman for Children, A Better Normal. It is an important and timely document as we begin to emerge from the immediate and acute phase of the pandemic and start to consider the long-term consequences and implications on our society, children in particular.

I agree with the ombudsman's stark statement that 2020 was a devastating year for children. He states that children were described as vectors and blamed for transmission, seen as carriers and not welcome in public spaces. In a sense, our children disappeared. They disappeared from our streets, our playing pitches and our playgrounds and classrooms, behind the front gate and the front door, or at least the fortunate ones did.

There are too many families and children for whom the front gate, the front door and the roof over their heads are not a given, that is, those in homelessness or at risk of losing their homes. This debate takes place in the shadow of the report of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission that showed that lone parents and their children account for 53% of all homeless families. Through A Better Normal, the ombudsman is seeking a Government commitment to prioritising children as we plan for life post Covid. We should give that commitment and put it front and centre in our planning for this budget and beyond, to make the welfare and well-being of our children a central part of the work not just of the Minister's Department but throughout the Government as a whole. Just as has been done in New Zealand, where the living standards framework and well-being budgeting encourages cross-departmental thinking, we should put the interests of our children and young people at the heart of our Government's decision-making.

The roadmap for social inclusion sets out a national ambition for 2025 to reduce the national consistent poverty rate to 2% or less of the population. If we are serious about achieving that target and living up to our sustainable development goal of no poverty, we should go after poverty where it is most prevalent, namely, among children, of lone parents in particular. We should do that in the first instance through our social welfare system. In a very specific and targeted way, we should consider increasing again the increase for a qualified child, IQC, as we did in the previous budget. The tax strategy group examined this option and calculated that a €5 increase for under-12s and a €2 increase for over-12s would cost just over €50 million. This would be money well spent in targeting precisely those children we know to be at greatest risk of poverty.

In the medium term and more generally, we should seek to index our social welfare payments against a baseline threshold, such as the minimum effective standard of living, MESL, and take out of the budgetary cycle that kind of simplistic and reductive conversation about the additional €5 on whatever payment it is. Access to affordable childcare is a touchstone issue for working parents throughout the country, with availability in short supply and costs increasing to unsustainable levels for many families. This, again, disproportionately affects lower income families and lone parents in particular, and it is something directly under the Minister's competence. Helping these families access the labour market by providing affordable childcare will make it more possible for them to lift themselves and their children out of poverty.

Dr. Muldoon's report refers specifically to the school meals programme. The Minister will know as well as I that this has been Green Party policy since the time of Trevor Sargent. He, like me, had a background in primary school teaching and I feel the same as he does. The State has the children. We have them in our care, in our schools - let us feed them. It would have a positive impact on nutrition, poverty and social development and benefit all children in the State. If it can be done elsewhere, it can be done here. I reiterate that while we have them, let us feed them.

On the issue of housing, I refer to that harrowing figure from the Irish Youth Foundation that was quoted earlier. Of the 40,000 babies born since the pandemic, 8,000 will have left the maternity hospital to spend their first night in marginalisation, disadvantage and, in many cases, homelessness. We must move on the issue of a referendum on the right to housing.

Zooming out to the big picture, I turn to the heart of why the Minister and I were elected to this House. We need to move with urgency on the issue of climate change. It is our children and their children who will suffer the worst impacts of climate breakdown should we fail to act. Climate strikers will be out again this Friday to make the case and call for radical climate action. It is our responsibility to follow through on the promise we made to our voters to deliver that.

I often think of one of the recurring themes of our President's contributions when he served in this House, namely, that in a republic, there should be a minimum floor of human dignity, below which we should not allow any of our citizens to fall. When we live in a country where almost one in five children lives at risk of poverty, we are not living up to that aspiration. Let us put it front and centre, at the heart of our decision-making, that the welfare of children will be our utmost and top priority.

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