Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)

I share Deputy O'Reilly's concerns. Looking at the child poverty monitor, we see the failure of the 2020 roadmap for social inclusion, which included a target of reducing consistent poverty among adults and children from 5% to 2%. Five years later, we are still at 5%. The roadmap has been an abject failure.

One of my concerns when it comes to child poverty and poverty within families is their lack of resilience to deal with emergencies and other issues that arise for them. I have in mind the inability, because of the assessment of need crisis, to access the special education supports that are needed. There is also the issue of people who, were there no housing crisis, would be paying differential rents on council houses. They are now paying differential rents for housing assistance payment, HAP, properties plus cash top-ups to the landlords. The resilience to deal with such situations is gone from families and households. I want to see an all-of-Government approach, involving the Departments of housing, health and children, as well as the Minister's Department, to get to grips with this issue.

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