Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge that the Minister accepted the reality when he appeared at the United Nations meeting on child poverty. We need to focus on poorer children as a sector of society that is consistently living with severe disadvantage. Digging deeper, we can see the figures are not huge and we should be able to have a good crack at ending the problem. There are 138,000 children living in poverty, and the rate of consistent poverty has increased from 6.8% to 11.7%. Those are not my figures but those of the Ombudsman for Children. Even if the outcomes of Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures are realised, there will still be approximately 37,000 children living in poverty in 2020. There are 1,054 children who are part of homeless families, which means they live in very bad conditions. We have seen how they live with bed bugs, mice and cockroaches, which is unacceptable in Ireland in 2016.

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