Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 128 and 141 together.

The Government is committed to the reduction of all forms of poverty, particularly child poverty, as outlined in the Programme for Governmentand the Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020 to 2025.

The Roadmap is a whole of Government strategy with the ambitious target to reduce consistent poverty to 2 per cent or less and make Ireland one of the most socially inclusive countries in the EU. Following a mid-term review published in June 2023, this is to be achieved by implementing 81 commitments across seven high level goals. Progress on the majority of these commitments is well underway, with the majority achieved or achieved with on-going delivery and the remaining commitments in progress.

Social Protection Budgets over the past number of years have prioritised the introduction of measures that have had and will continue to have a direct and positive impact on poverty, and in particular on child poverty. This includes:

• A €17 increase in weekly personal rates of payments.
• Increases to Qualified Child Payments, bringing rates to €50 per week for children aged 12 and over, and €42 for children under the age of 12.
• Increases in the Working Family Payment thresholds in Budgets 2022 and 2023, as well as a €500 cost of living lump sum payment to all recipients last November.
• once-off €100 lump sum payment for Child Benefit.
• once-off €100 payment in Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance.
• Extension of the Hot School Meals programme to all DEIS primary schools and special schools from October 2023, benefiting 64,500 children.

Independent post Budget 2024 analysis from the ESRI further found that the package of measures introduced under the Budget ensures that there are gains in disposable income for all household types, with lone parents and pensioners living alone recording the greatest proportional increases.

Research published under the joint DSP-ESRI Poverty and Social Inclusion Research Programme has examined, among other things, effective measures for reducing poverty and child poverty. The research finds that bringing about a significant reduction in consistent poverty requires more than a package of social welfare payments. In this regard, the most effective route out of poverty is increasing employment.

My Department recently launched a public consultation on the setting of a new national child poverty target. The consultation is available on the gov.ie website and is open until the 19th of January 2024. The development of a new national child poverty target will feed into the wider whole of Government approach to address child poverty, including the establishment of the Child Poverty and Well-being programme office in the Department of the Taoiseach and the recently published Young Ireland: The National Policy Framework for Children and Young People 2023 – 2028, led by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.