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

As I said, this is an all-of-government approach. I focused in my reply on the things I am doing within my Department. I make no apologies for having a long-term strategy as to how to tackle these issues. The work we are doing now in respect of the NCS, core funding, the expansion of AIM - all those really good programmes - came about after a little long-term thought. I am very proud that we are now looking to bring forward a new strand, that being the equal participation model.

I can speak to what is happening across the Government. I can speak to the actions the Minister, Deputy Foley, has taken to reduce the cost of education for children through free schoolbooks. I can speak to the very extensive steps the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, has taken to increase the working family payment and the increase for a qualified child, IQC, to bring in the additional child benefit payments and to increase social welfare payments. There are also the energy credits that have been brought in across Government to tackle very specifically the immediate cost-of-living crisis that has been experienced.

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