Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate fully that poverty is multidimensional. I hope it goes across all Departments. The Ombudsman for Children asked for a child poverty strategy to be embedded in all Departments and I welcome this call.

At its basis, poverty, whether that is childhood poverty or the poverty of a family, is about what a person is being asked to go without, such as food, warm clothes, shoes or the capacity to go to the cinema. That comes down to income.

People have a right to be supported by the social welfare system. When will we see a social welfare rate that enables the child, and the family from which that child comes, to remove themselves from that capacity to go without? Within the lifetime of the Minister's Government, will welfare rates go towards the minimum essential standard of living, MESL, that is required? Until we get to that point, all the cross-departmental supports, which are welcome, will not matter a dot if we are still asking families in this country to go hungry. That is the essence of the matter.

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