Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

Almost one in four applicants for international protection are children. Some 6,755 children are living in direct provision. Their parents receive a payment for them of just €29.80 per week. The child poverty monitor 2024, published yesterday, reports that this falls well below a minimum essential standard of living. It says it is not enough, of course, to cover basic needs like food, healthcare, school supplies, clothing or footwear. It forces thousands of children with no responsibility for the situation that they are in to live in consistent poverty. The Government knows all of this. It is not news. The Government is planning not to end this deliberate policy of impoverishment and immiseration; the intention is to expand it instead. It is going to bring more children into this system. Ukrainian kids must be made equally miserable by having their payments also cut to €29.80. They must also be ground down to the same subsistence level as the kids in direct provision. The same sort of performative cruelty is on display as when the Government picks up and destroys the tents of vulnerable people who have almost nothing in this world just to show it is taking the issue seriously. How can the Taoiseach justify the cruelty? Are the children to be sacrificed, like the children drowning in the Mediterranean in the name of deterrence?

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