Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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198. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the way in which the task of lifting 113,000 children out of consistent poverty can be achieved with budget 2018 only allocating a small increase to the child dependant allowance of €3 per week; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [44267/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The increase of €2 in the payment for qualified children (IQC), which most weekly social welfare payments can include, represents an increase of 6.7% in this payment, and will bring the estimated cost of this child-related element of the welfare budget to in the region of €579 million in 2017. This budgetary measure specifically targeted children in low-income families, and as such should assist in the goal of lifting such children out of poverty.

The measure should not be looked at in isolation. It is one of the three main child income support payments available to families, alongside Child Benefit and the Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance. This increase brings the combined payment for children to almost €66 per child per week. Altogether, the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection will spend in excess of €3 billion in 2017 providing income support for families through Child Benefit, qualified child increases for welfare recipients, Family Income Supplement and the Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance.

Social transfers play a crucial role in alleviating poverty and inequality and Ireland is among the best performing countries in the EU for reducing poverty through social transfers. But income supports cannot provide all the solutions. While protecting children and young people from poverty and social exclusion is about ensuring that they have adequate income and resources, it is also about ensuring that they can live in decent houses, have access to good quality education and health-care, and have every opportunity necessary to develop and to participate as equals in society. It is also about helping unemployed families to take-up work and to improve the rewards from work. Government employment policies, such as Pathways to Workand the Action Plan on Jobs, along with increases in minimum wage and income supports such as the Family Income Supplement and the Back to Work Family Dividend, both of which have been improved in Budget 2018, are clearly working in this regard.

Under the Better Outcomes Brighter Futures framework, a whole of Government approach to tackling child poverty has just been published, which recognises the crucial importance of services such as childcare, housing, and education. It is through this whole of Government approach, which emphasises the need for a combined approach of both income supports and provision of services, that we can find the key to tackling child poverty in Ireland.