Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is always very important that we would address the issue of child poverty in this House. With regard to the specific elements of food poverty, the Deputy will be aware that in last year's budget and this year's, the free school meals programme was broadened. This is probably the most practical step we can take to provide immediate sustenance to young children and to support their education. Further to that, the Minister for Education has announced a broadening of the DEIS scheme, which again will provide greater supports for children in the most disadvantaged schools.

It is also worth noting that we discussed child poverty when we both came into these roles 18 months ago. There was a big concern that with Covid we would see a big spike. The child poverty figures released for 2020, which is the latest we have from December of last year, actually showed a drop. Some 14,000 children came out of child poverty, which is a 1.2% drop. It is a small drop but it does show that the measures we took during Covid, with the additional supports, did work. That spike we all feared did not happen and we actually had a decrease.

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