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

I propose to take Questions Nos. 42 and 47 together.

I have seen the report referred to by Deputy Smith which highlights the difficulties currently being faced by children and families. There must be a cross-government response to this. My Department has recognised child poverty as a significant issue to be given a focus in the next national policy framework for children and young people 2023-28. This framework is expected to be published in the coming months.

While many children and young people are doing well, we recognise that there are acute challenges for specific cohorts who experience disadvantage, such as child poverty, and child and youth mental health and well-being challenges. The framework proposes a series of spotlight programmes focusing on these intractable issues, where some children and young people are experiencing severe difficulty and input is required from across government.

On child poverty, my Department is working closely with the Department of the Taoiseach which recently established a new child poverty and well-being programme office. The role of the Department of the Taoiseach will be to co-ordinate and focus Government action in this area. The initial focus of the office will be on six key areas, including income supports and joblessness; early learning and childcare; reducing the cost of education; youth homelessness; consolidating and integrating family and parental supports; and enhancing participation in culture and arts of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Significant investment has been made by my Department in the last two years to support parents with the costs of paying for early learning and childcare and a number of further measures are planned for the future. We have discussed core funding already and the investment that has brought about. In addition to core funding, the national childcare scheme, NCS, provides support to help parents meet the cost of childcare. Significant enhancements have been made to the NCS over the last year.

My Department is also currently developing a tailored policy response in order to progress the development of a new strand of funding, entitled Tackling Disadvantage: the Equal Participation Model. I often describe this as DEIS for early years. We want to design a model like the access and inclusion model, AIM, but where AIM focuses on supporting children with a disability to access early years services, the idea behind the equal participation model is to better assist children from disadvantaged backgrounds, including Traveller children, children who are in international protection and children whose families are in socioeconomic disadvantage, to engage with early learning and childcare.

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