John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I add my voice to the well wishes to Deputy Boyd Barrett. Regarding the well-being side of the child poverty and well-being committee within the Department, our commitment as a Government to establish DEIS Plus is an important milestone. The Taoiseach will appreciate that in constituencies like my own, there are a breadth and intensity of challenges that simply do not exist in other communities. These include intergenerational poverty, which was just mentioned, and intergenerational trauma. That is one of the characteristics of the asks of those schools involved in caring for these children. They talk about nurture rooms and trauma-informed practices. Over the past five to ten years, one of the biggest learnings that has been made by school staff is the idea of nurture schools or trauma-informed practices in schools. The idea is simple. Children clearly cannot be in a position to learn unless they experience love, care, safety, routine, predictability and structure. Could the subcommittee look at the establishment of these nurture rooms in the DEIS Plus context?

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