Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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64. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development his Department’s role in addressing child poverty under the six priority areas identified by the child poverty and well-being unit; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26343/25]

Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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Regrettably, child poverty is on the rise in this country. It is particularly challenging in rural areas but in many of our communities as well. What is the Department's role in addressing child poverty under the six priority areas identified by the child poverty and well-being unit?

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Within my Department, the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, is the primary social inclusion programme. It aims to reduce poverty and promote social inclusion and equality in Ireland through supporting communities and individuals using community development approaches, engagement and collaboration. I thank and commend our SICAP teams all over the country for their work. Although addressing child poverty is not an explicit target of SICAP, services and supports are typically delivered to children experiencing poverty and disadvantage through other general target groups, including the heads of one-parent families, people experiencing educational disadvantage and those living in jobless households or households where the primary income source is low-paid or precarious. SICAP also features youth as a thematic focus area. It supports development of youth groups, arts and crafts, games, sports, etc. and, in particular, preventative early school leaving initiatives, youth-focused active citizenship and leadership programmes and mental health and well-being programmes. Targeted supports are provided in many SICAP areas for particular groups of young people in specific areas. Collaboration is a critical success factor for services delivered through SICAP.

Local development companies that support the delivery of SICAP locally engage with agencies such as Tusla, children and young people's services committees and school completion officers to ensure that relevant and specifically targeted supports are provided for specific children in each community. In that context, services delivered through SICAP contribute directly and indirectly to addressing the priority areas identified by the Deputy, including income supports and joblessness, early learning and childcare, reducing the cost of education, addressing family homelessness and, in particular, integrating our public health and family support services. We will continue to support SICAP. We also provide support through the scheme to many national organisations providing specific local responses depending on the circumstances of a local area.

Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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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.

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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With my other hat on, we are absolutely focused on those child poverty figures. I am not happy with them. We will be bringing forward a number of initiatives in this year's budget. The Deputy touched on something we need to do a lot more work on, namely, rural poverty, in particular, and hidden poverty. The area of transport is one the Deputy has identified. Under the current CLÁR initiative, we are supporting organisations to acquire vehicles. In the CLÁR 2 programme, which has just closed for applications, we will be looking at supporting organisations to get vehicles to provide rural transport, particularly in the education frame. We have done that over a number of iterations of that scheme. For those with special education needs and disabilities, transport in rural areas is particularly challenging for younger people and children. In this year's CLÁR 2 stream of funding, we will be looking at supporting organisations that are addressing that transport issue specifically.

There is also greater flexibility and greater potential for Local Link to provide services in this space. I will work with my colleague the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, to ensure that Local Link is focused in the best way possible, working with the local development companies. Local Link has a very strong working relationship with local development companies in this space. We can fill gaps there using the Local Link provision as well.

Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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I will again put on record my thanks to the Local Link service. It has made a difference in rural communities but there is no doubt it can do more, particularly in areas like Ballitore, which is a small village on the outskirts of my hometown. However, there is a lack of services coming from that particular village, which, as the Minister said, is impacting on those who are seeking education and employment or just seeking social interaction. It is having a direct impact, as I know, on children in that area. It is not just there; there are other villages as well.

The Minister mentioned SICAP - as I said, I pay tribute to those who work in the area - and stated that child poverty was not an explicit target. I ask that it become an explicit target for SICAP. That is most important if we are to be serious about tackling an almost doubling of figures of child poverty in this State. SICAP should be entrusted with developing rural communities to set and see child poverty figures. It should become a specific target of what it does day in, day out. That is a necessary step forward for SICAP and what it will do if we are to become serious about tackling that almost doubling of the child poverty figures the CSO has recently given us.

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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As I said, it is not a specific focus, but it is very much part of SICAP's work through all its engagement with organisations. Many of the SICAP teams give specific local responses to specific situations and children or family situations in communities, depending on what they work with.

They work closely with the Child and Family Agency and the area school completion units. That is one of the strengths of SICAP. It is local and targeted. As part of our overall response to the challenges of child poverty, I will examine how we can engage SICAP. We cannot do that without resourcing it more, and I acknowledge that we have to deliver that. We may ask SICAP to give us more measurement of what it is actually doing. It is doing phenomenal work in this space, a lot of it unseen, as all of us in the House know. It makes specific interventions but does not shout about that. We may have to look at capturing that. I will consider the proposal.