Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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31. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the measures she is putting in place to tackle food poverty; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [9126/15]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The Department of Social Protection’s primary role is to provide income supports to sustain an adequate standard of living and to prevent poverty. The Department spends in the region of €20 billion in providing income supports every year. These and other social transfers are very effective in reducing the at-risk-of-poverty rate: in 2013, social transfers (including pensions) reduced the at-risk-of-poverty rate from 49.8 per cent (before social transfers) to 15.2 per cent (after social transfers), thereby lifting a third of the population out of relative income poverty. This represents a poverty reduction effect of 69.5 per cent, up from 67.2 per cent in 2012. Ireland is among the best performing EU member states in this regard.

The Department of Social Protection administers the school meals programme as a targeted intervention for children at risk of food poverty and educational disadvantage. The Department provided €37 million for the programme in 2014, benefiting almost 207,000 children across some 1,600 schools and related organisations. An additional €2 million was allocated to the school meals scheme in Budget 2015.

Specific responsibility for food and nutrition policy lies with the Department of Health. Food poverty is one aspect of the experience of poverty and deprivation, as captured by the official indicator of consistent poverty. In 2013, 8.2 per cent of the population were in consistent poverty. The national social target is to reduce consistent poverty to 4 per cent by 2016 and to 2 per cent or less by 2020.

The economy is growing, unemployment is falling, and confidence is slowly returning. The Government has completed the first phase of the recovery and we are now starting the second: the process of restoring living standards to ensure that everyone - every family, every community, will benefit from the recovery. Through this, I am confident that we will achieve the national social target for poverty reduction by 2020.