Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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In 2019, the European Commission announced the creation of a European Child Guarantee with a view to ensuring that every child in Europe at risk of poverty or social exclusion has access to the most basic of rights like healthcare and education. The Child Guarantee, adopted by the Council of the European Union in June 2021, aims to prevent and combat social exclusion by guaranteeing the access of children in need to a set of key services, namely early childhood education and care, education, healthcare, nutrition, and housing. 

The Child Guarantee is complementary to and consistent with a number of other EU initiatives. It represents a concrete deliverable of the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan and will contribute to achieving its headline target of reducing the number of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion. It complements the EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child, which pools all existing and future initiatives on children’s rights under one coherent policy framework. 

Each Member State is required to nominate a national coordinator for the implementation of the recommendation establishing the European Child Guarantee by 2030, and DCEDIY has been given this role.  

The recommendation also requires Member States to publish and submit to the European Commission a National Action Plan addressing the implementation of the Guarantee. Ireland published its National Action Plan in June 2022. The publication of the National Action Plan was an important first step in the implementation of the EU Child Guarantee. My Department is coordinating actions across Government in addition to holding responsibility for the delivery of actions contained in this Plan relating to Early Childhood Education and Care. To date, 18 Member States including Ireland have published their EU Child Guarantee National Action Plans. 

The National Action Plan details efforts, in accordance with the aims of the Guarantee, to address child poverty and social exclusion in Ireland and, in so doing, highlights key strategies currently in play. The key areas of the Plan refer to actions, objectives, targets and timelines - addressing some of the key barriers identified – in each of the following areas - education, early childhood education and care, healthcare, healthy nutrition and housing. 

Identifying the most appropriate and effective structures to pursue the reforms necessary to improve outcomes for our most disadvantaged children and young people is a particular focus of the work in the implementation of the EU Child Guarantee National Action Plan. In this regard, the new National Framework for Children and Young People, currently under development, and its cross-government and cross-sectoral engagement will inform this process.