Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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4. To ask the Minister for Social Protection her views that the F grade for the Government in the area of child poverty in the 2015 report card of the Children's Rights Alliance is a fair assessment; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [9403/15]

Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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I put down the question to ascertain what progress, if any, the Government has made on its stated commitment to reduce child poverty.

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I have read with interest the Children’s Rights Alliance report card for 2015 and its recommendations for Government action to tackle child poverty. In my view, the role of social transfers, which I referred to earlier, is not given enough weight in the report. The at-risk-of-poverty rate for children has fallen for the first time in three years by nearly 1 percentage point, from 18.8% in 2011 to 17.9%. This compares with an at-risk-of-poverty rate for children in 2005, when the economy was doing extraordinarily well, of 23.1%. That improvement is outlined in the SILC report, which is based on data from the preceding year, 2013, and reflects data from the period of the greatest difficulty in the economy.

Budget 2015 increased expenditure on children by €96 million and I increased child benefit by €5 per month. Other child-specific measures included the new back-to-work family dividend and an additional €2 million on the school meals programme. The Department published the social impact assessment of budget 2015, which found that for the first time since the economic crisis, welfare and income tax policies will result in an increase in average household incomes of 0.7%. It also found that households with children - both earning and non-earning households - generally gain more than those households without children. The Government has agreed a child-specific poverty target which aims to lift 70,000 children out of poverty by 2020, equivalent to a reduction of two thirds on the 2011 rate. Following a national seminar to discuss how the target would be implemented, the Department is now finalising an implementation plan for a whole-of-Government approach to child poverty, with other Departments and following consultation with the Children’s Rights Alliance and other children’s organisations.

As I said, this Government will deliver a social as well as an economic recovery to ensure that every family, every community and every individual will benefit from the recovery that is now underway. I am very confident that as a society, we will be able to achieve the child poverty target by 2020.

Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister mentioned the increase in child benefit. That increase was only a partial reversal of the decrease the Minister had already introduced. Is the Minister aware of the UNICEF report, Children of the Recession, published last October? It demonstrates clearly and unambiguously that there are 130,000 more children living in poverty in this country now than there were five years ago and that this is a result of deliberate choices made by Government. It points to governments in other countries which equally had to combat austerity but which made different choices, and the child poverty statistics improved in those countries as a result. Does the Minister agree that all the analysis, all the studies and all the reports point specifically to one thing, namely, the Government's policy on child poverty is an abysmal failure?

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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Altogether, the Department of Social Protection will spend almost €3 billion in 2015 in providing income support for families through child benefit, qualified child increases for people on social welfare, family income supplement, the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance and, as I said, increased resources for the schools meals programme, which is specifically aimed at children. Child income supports and other social transfers are very effective in reducing child poverty. The 2013 CSO survey of income and living conditions - the SILC - showed that social transfers reduced the at-risk-of-poverty rate for children from 45.5% to 17.9%, thereby lifting a quarter of all children out of poverty. This equates to a poverty reduction effect of 60.7% in 2013, and the SILC data is based on much of 2012 as well as 2013. That was an incredibly difficult point in the crash in banking and construction that had happened under the previous Government.

These results show Ireland as being among the best-performing member states of the EU in this regard. Commentators looking at Ireland have repeated this over and over again. I would also point out to the Deputy that these studies do not take into account of additional benefits which households on social welfare may have, such as access to a medical card or access to social housing and, therefore, to a differential rent, which may be more modest than that for people at work who are renting privately.

Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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The UNICEF report is clear. Of the 41 countries surveyed, we come in at No. 37. That puts us behind countries that only recently became democracies and countries whose economies are far less well developed than ours.

The Minister mentioned three things in regard to social transfers, one of which was the partial alleviation in the original reduction in child benefit. Commenting on that, the Children's Rights Alliance stated:

Child Poverty gets an 'F' grade in Report Card 2015, a fall from last year’s 'E-' grade. This is due to the fact that although the Government introduced a small monthly increase in the Child Benefit payment ... this gesture does not go far enough to reverse the impact that austerity budgets have already had on children living in poverty.

The Minister mentioned studies, reports, whole-of-government approaches and so on. The figures are consistently getting worse. Does the Government have any specific proposals that will arrest this trend?

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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What the UNICEF report, the OECD report and all of the other reports show is that the worst cause of poverty among children is when the adults in the household lose their job or their business. Therefore, the best outcome one can get for children is that the adults in the household in which the children reside are in a position to get work, either on a full-time or a part-time basis, depending on their care responsibilities. What we had, particularly during the period of the Celtic tiger, and I do not know why, was a steady and significant number of households - one of the highest levels in the EU - where none of the adults in the house was at work, whether it was a lone-parent family or a two-adult household. All of the statistics show that it is joblessness rather than the social welfare system which results in the biggest transfer of income support from people at work to people out of work.

As the OECD has acknowledged time and again, Ireland has the highest rate of jobless households in the European Union. We must focus on helping adults of working age living in households with children into part-time or full-time work or in setting up a business in order that they can enhance their income. Finding employment for parents is the best way to get children out of poverty.