Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Taoiseach to the Chamber. Reference was made to the decrease in poverty rates during the pandemic. It is understood that decrease in child poverty rates was linked to the economic measures during the pandemic. According to Central Statistics Office, CSO, data, there were 671,000 people living in poverty in 2022. Of them, approximately 188,000 were children, while an additional 247,000 children were living in households experiencing deprivation. The at-risk-of-poverty rate for individuals and households with one adult and one or more children under the age of 18 was 23.8%, compared with 13.1% for persons living in two-adult households with one to three children.

I heard the Taoiseach’s comments yesterday in the Dáil Chamber. For that reason, I asked an adult who once experienced child poverty, and who is in a prison cell, to provide the following contribution on poverty.

Childhood poverty is more than just numbers. Behind every statistic is a human being. You see, I know childhood poverty. I have lived within and amongst it. It is not some abstract concept. Childhood poverty is sadly an all too common element of my community.

Poverty has many insidious nuances. It's the heavy air that fills the home. It's not having a home.

It's the helpless feeling you get as you watch your mother cry because she hasn't got enough money to feed everyone.

It's the struggle of trying to do your homework while the prepay power meter screams in the background. Childhood poverty is the anger that explodes from Mam when the power cuts off before the washing machine finishes.

It's cramped spaces and a lack of privacy. Childhood poverty is also violent. You see, an inability to meet one's economic needs is a core driver of violence. Poverty drives violence, violence drives shame, shame drives violence. It's a vicious cycle that becomes imprinted in the minds of our vulnerable youth. It consumes entire communities.

Childhood poverty is feelings of shame and embarrassment.

It's the ache you feel when you can't stop crying and you don't know why.

It's the inability to concentrate in school or control your emotions.

It's a starving belly but no appetite.

It's feelings of frustration, anger and happiness all at once. It's trying to solve adult problems with a child's mind. Childhood poverty brings questions too. Why do mam and dad cry when I go to bed? Did I do something wrong? Do they love me? Will I ever be good enough?

Childhood poverty is not just a lack of money. Childhood poverty steals people of the love and care that they need to grow and flourish. Childhood poverty causes an internal emptiness. If we look inside our state-run institutions, our prisons and psychiatric hospitals, we will find the carnage that childhood poverty leaves behind. Yours, and successive governments must take responsibility for that carnage, for that deprivation of freedom. Poverty is a lack of freedom, and until we move from the illusion of doing something, to real action our system stands over large numbers of its citizens not being free. There is no real democracy where there is such poverty.

As regards the child poverty and well-being programme office, I ask the Taoiseach to clarify the extent to which the office is staffed or supported by people with experience of poverty at the coalface and the impact it has on individuals, families and communities. Will he commit to supporting and resourcing independent research based on the minimum essential standards of living or looking at a universal basic income for certain groups such as care givers? I have far more to say but I will leave it there.