Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

First, I join the Minister in thanking the staff of the many SICAP groups in the country, across 31 local authority groups. They do tremendous work - there is absolutely no doubt about that - but the figures we have been presented with from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, show that child poverty in this country has almost doubled, from 4.8% to 8.5%. As I said, it is a particular problem in rural Ireland, notwithstanding the work that SICAP does and the fact that we have a lack of services, particularly around transport whereby people are not able to access hospital appointments, job opportunities, etc. That is having a direct effect on child poverty in rural Ireland.

What we need to see is what is happening in Scotland. I would be interested in the Minister's thoughts on this. They have a child poverty reduction Act, which goes across departments and gets reports from every department of government on what they are doing to tackle child poverty. The Minister might come back and let me know if that is something his Department is looking at along with the other Department he serves and also as a cross-government response to the unacceptable rise in those child poverty figures.

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