Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent)
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47. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if he was referring to persons that rely on social transfers from his Department to keep them out of poverty when he stated those that contribute nothing and want everything free. [25931/17]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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No, I was not. I firmly believe that people and families know how best to organise their own lives and make decisions for themselves and I also believe that the role of the State should be to offer a helping hand to those people and families that need it.

That is why I want the social protection system and anti-poverty policies to focus on improving and extending existing contributory benefits such as parental leave. It is why I want a strong social insurance system and the contributory principle underpinning it so that employees and self-employed people who pay in through PRSI and in return receive benefits when they need them and that everyone who contributes benefits, for example, during periods of unemployment or illness, maternity/paternity, on retirement or if a person pre-deceases their dependents. That is why I want to reduce consistent poverty rates to pre-crisis levels and then lower. I want to do the same for child poverty.

To achieve these objectives will require a holistic set of actions comprising employment opportunities, education, wages, welfare and affordable access to public services. In this respect my Department will focus on policies such as: supporting all families in areas such as extending maternity and paternity leave and will allow couples to share it; helping to restore free education in our schools by increasing the Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance; and alongside the implementation of the Action Plan for Education, provide subsidised school books/tablets to all children and extend the School Breakfast Programme to more schools every year