Speech by Minister Katherine Zappone at Open Policy Debate on Reducing Child Poverty

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Opening Remarks

Colleagues,

I would like to welcome you all to this open policy debate on reducing child poverty. Thank you all for being here today.

Our topic is particularly relevant today as we prepare to celebrate the holiday season. This is a very special time of the year especially for children.

It is the time of the year when all children should be allowed to experience love, hope and happiness.

However, Christmas can be a challenging time for families. It is the time when the experience of poverty is emphasised and the inequality between children manifests itself in more visible ways. Parents can find themselves not able to provide their children those happy memories and joyful experiences they wish they could. For many low income families Christmas emphasises their sense of isolation, disparity and otherness.

As we all recognise, growing up hungry and isolated, being exposed to economic and educational disadvantages, limited access to healthcare or sub-standard housing, severely hinders any child’s or young person’s wellbeing, prospects and outcomes.

We all know that experiencing poverty in childhood has life-long and inter-generational consequences. We also know children carry extraordinary resilience within them.

From the early days of our work in the Shanty, I have been deeply conscious of this profound impact endemic poverty can have on communities, families and children. Hence, it has been both a personal and professional commitment for me to work towards eradicating and breaking the cycle of inter-generational poverty in our underserved communities and beyond.

I would like to start my remarks today by acknowledging the significant contribution of Tanya Ward and the Children’s Rights Alliance for co-organising our event today and for your continuing commitment to children’s rights, wellbeing and visibility in our society.

I would also like to welcome Mary Daly, Professor of Sociology and Social Policy, from the University of Oxford. I am especially pleased that Professor Daly is here to provide an overview of current thinking and research around reducing child poverty and I especially look forward to your insight into the European Child Guarantee which planned to be included in the next EU budget.

I have been greatly inspired by your work since the days we founded The Shanty. More recently I have been influenced by your work that aims to provide a better understanding about the ‘relational processes’ of resource and income allocation within the family unit in the context of poverty. For example when you discuss family resource sharing dynamics of where parents and especially mothers often compromise their own needs to provide for their children’s needs, I was really struck by this.

As I have stated before, the difficulty with our official statistics is that they often only capture information as provided by the adult in a household this information is used to calculate poverty for all individuals in that household by assuming an equal resource sharing. Children and young people are effectively ‘invisible’ in these official statistics. I believe your contribution in this area has been vitally important.

You have also raised the significance of child- centred policy development which considers children and young people as agent, active citizens in their own right, and able to take action for and in their own lives. This is something that I support this with great passion.

I very much look forward to hearing you presentation today.

I would also like to welcome Dr. Delma Byrne, who has been commissioned by my department to conduct a baseline analysis of child and family poverty. Dr. Byrne will be presenting preliminary findings from our baseline analysis here this morning.

Introduction

After too many years of indifference we are finally seeing the momentum rising for this debate across our society.

In recent years we have initiated a Whole of Government response to reducing child poverty. We have established an ambitious child poverty target. Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures that was launched in 2014 identified reduction of child poverty as one of its key priorities. We have worked closely with the NGO sector and the National Advisory Council of which Tanya is now Chair, to pursue these goals.

I must commend Tanya and her fellow Council members for their excellent work on this issue, encouraging debate and informing policy that has significantly helped to combat child poverty in this country.

We have been able to reduce the child poverty rate year on year since 2014.

The positive trend of reductions in the child poverty rate is continuing.

The newly released child poverty rate for 2018 has shown a reduction from 8.8% in 2017 to 7.7% in 2018 indicating a continued downward trend and equating to a drop in the child poverty rate of 5% since 2014.

Likewise, the deprivation rate has dropped from a high of 36.3% in 2014 to 19.7% in 2018. And household incomes are improving.

But there is much more that needs to be done.

Children are still categorically and disproportionately overrepresented in the consistent poverty population cohort. While only every 4th citizen is a child (25 %), almost 40 % all those experiencing consistent poverty, are children.

Last year, as many of you know I convened a high level policy workshop with Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General on child poverty and food poverty and many of you here today, contributed with your expertise.

As Professor Sachs has stated - poverty is a result of cruelty and neglect - it is not a necessity.

The challenge of poverty is absolutely solvable once we put our minds to the challenge.

According to him our market economy system does not by itself guarantee fair growth or social justice. It is a system to create wealth but must be tempered by the demands of morality, ethics, and responsibility.

Global capitalism, he says - has created vast wealth and it has created vast inequality.

In my view we need to ask ourselves if our perception of what constitutes a competitive and sensible economic policy should be interrogated. Indeed, should we quest for one that produces a better, more just society as well as one that spurs economic growth?

I am not rebuking free market capitalism. I firmly believe in the freedoms of economic opportunity, in encouraging innovation and in empowering entrepreneurial spirit.

However, in the recent years, ground-breaking economists have started to invoke questions regarding the sustainability of untampered, unregulated, run-away capitalism and if indeed, the purely free market model is compatible with a just society.

This year’s Nobel winning economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, emphasise in their new book ‘Good Economics for Hard Times’ that “there are no iron laws of economics keeping us from building a more humane world”. They instead discuss ways economics can aid human dignity – help people to absorb shocks without allowing those shocks to affect their sense of self. They also highlight the importance of social policy not to define people by their problems and by doing so deny their true identity and with it - hope for a better future.

Progressive economists like Dr. Mariana Mazzucato have invited us to reimagine the basic principles of capitalism. How States can facilitate new innovation inclusivity and sustainability as well as a dynamic, thriving economy. She has encouraged us to rethink capitalism, rethink the role of public policy and perhaps most importantly, she asks us to rethink the partnerships between private and public entities in order to ensure that we can ultimately achieve the sustainable and inclusive growth that we want and need for all of our citizens. Her thinking regarding how we define value creation in our economies and how we can and should re-define these narratives are truly inspirational, and more to the point, implementable.

I believe innovation is critical to any modern economy. Our capacity to promote new innovation has a direct impact on our potential for economic growth. This is immensely important

But, it is equally important that the growth that is generated is progressive, fair and sustainable.

Countries with the lowest poverty rates among children are those where investment on early years, education and health are the highest. Correspondingly these economies are also rated high on the key free-market indices. They are competitive, business-friendly and highly innovative.

They are fair.

This is what we need to aspire to.

In his Irish Times Opinion in association with the No Child Campaign, Professor Sachs called for Early Childhood Learning and Care for all children and targeted supports for low income families.

The development of the National Childcare Scheme is a significant leap towards the type of economy where we are investing in our children and reaping the benefits of an inclusive, smart and innovative economy as a consequence.

And it is my firm belief, we will make a significant impact on child poverty through the supports available under NCS.

In designing the NCS, extensive research and consultations were carried out to ensure that this goal is achieved and that the scheme can help as many families as possible while families at or below the relative income poverty line will benefit from the highest subsidy rates under the Scheme.

As I have acknowledged, anomalies may exist whereby a very small cohort may not be better off under the NCS than they currently are. However, we are conducting additional research and analysis to change this.

Enhancing whole of Government efforts

As many of you know, I asked the National Advisory Council and its Chair Tanya earlier this year for a paper to identify the most impactful approaches to reduce child poverty.

I would like to thank you for this essential work.

You outlined first, that the pre-requisite for maintaining momentum, to reduce child poverty further, and to reach our child poverty target is a strengthened cross-government focus on child specific poverty.

Secondly, you emphasised the need to monitor and document trends which will support actions to reduce child poverty and thirdly, the need to tackle intergenerational poverty and build strong communities through effective evidence based community initiatives that incorporate the learning from research and policy evaluation.

I wholeheartedly agree that there is a need to lead and to push the child poverty agenda at the heart of Government and every government department in conjunction with our partners in civil society and in the NGO sector.

While considerable progress has been achieved, we need to build on and strengthen the Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures implementation infrastructure with strong links to the National Advisory Council.

In my view, the successor of Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures is in the best position to progress this goal.

To ensure that the next Framework is high impact it needs to factor in capacity for ongoing relevancy and responsiveness at the design stage.

My department will be leading this work beginning in early 2020.

Of great importance, we also need to note that the new framework will take form in the context of the ongoing roll-out of the National Childcare Scheme, the implementation of the First Five Strategy and the National Development Plan which identifies childcare as a strategic priority.

I hope today’s open policy debate will be productive in providing you, the stakeholders, an opportunity to feed into the development at this initial stage.

Monitoring and documenting trends that will support actions to reduce child poverty

I believe, as you do, that in order to eradicate child specific poverty, we must broaden and deepen our understanding and measurement of it. As said earlier, one of my key questions is how we can make children and young people more ‘visible’ as part of our policy efforts. Research shows that children and young people’s perspectives of experiencing poverty and disadvantage are different to those of adults. Indeed, there is strong evidence that the depth and persistence of poverty is particularly harmful to children’s development, life outcomes and inter-generational transmission of poverty.

That is why a specific focus on how children experience poverty is important. Understanding their lived experiences can help lead us to genuinely ‘child-centred’ policies. And to measure poverty and poverty reduction efforts in a way that reflects those experiences.

I am delighted to announce the establishment of a child-specific research programme to explore these issues. This initiative is being led by the Research and Evaluation Unit in my department, and I would like to thank the team there for their work in developing the programme so far.

First phase: Statistical Baseline Analysis

The first phase of this programme conducted a statistical baseline analysis of children’s and families’ financial circumstances, using existing data. The preliminary findings of the study will be presented by Dr. Byrne here today.

This research highlights the strengths and weaknesses in current data collection on child poverty research. It examines how data might be used better to identify future data collection and to understand better the incidence, the effects and the lived experience of child poverty in Ireland.

The research also examines longitudinal studies such as the Growing up in Ireland study, Children’s School Lives and the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing that can inform how children’s lives are shaped by poverty.

Second phase

The next phase of the child-specific research programme will allow for an interrogation of medium- to long-term social policy concerns. The recently established Research Partnership between the ESRI and my department will lead and oversee this work.

At its inaugural Steering Committee meeting that was held this week, the Partnership decided to examine the dynamics of poverty and impacts on children’s outcomes.

This is an innovative project that will use child-specific Growing up in Ireland data. It will explore what helps to protect children in poverty or at risk of falling into poverty. It will make the children’s lives; when entering into and exiting out of poverty, visible.

Breaking intergenerational poverty and building strong communities.

We know that children who live in poverty in underserved communities face even greater challenges than those who reside in communities with less concentrated disadvantage. In such a landscape, area based approaches are critical.

Many of my convictions with regards to poverty eradication derive from my own experience and practice of developing an intergenerational model of community education and wrap-around family support services in Tallaght West. In An Cosán, we established a model of a one-stop multidisciplinary lifelong learning centre. The AnCosan Approach resonates strongly with the EU Commission Recommendation on Investing in Children. The model seeks to go beyond the approach where only some of the issues that the child or family experience are addressed and others aren’t. The cornerstone of the engagement is that the supports are tailored individually to the levels of need and not simply pre-packaged. They are also tailored to instilling ambition and resilience in every beautiful girl and boy.

We in Tallaght West know this model has delivered for our community by breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty. More research is needed though to increase our knowledge of why and how successful initiatives like An Cosan work in order to replicate them effectively elsewhere. This could contribute towards providing the evidence base to scale up models of community-based interventions for breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty, across the country.

Turning to the ABC Programme, the National Evaluation was published in 2018, it demonstrated that the regional interventions delivered significant impacts on children’s outcomes. We know that exceptional work is taking place in every community. We know these services are delivering for people and transforming lives.

The Tusla ABC Programme areas, in their enhanced role as real life settings for policy implementation will support the actions we have committed to carrying out under the Whole-of-Government Approach to Child Poverty. As such, the Tusla ABC Programme will develop a model of community based prevention and early intervention responses to mitigate the impact of poverty in underserved areas, in ways that could be mainstreamed across the country.

This titanic effort will address the latest research on child poverty, draw on the wisdom of our practitioners, with focused attention to the needs of our children, young people and their families.

Close

I know the Debate today will provide us with some of the latest thinking on reducing child poverty. It is an opportunity to discuss innovative ways we can enhance child poverty reduction. Our work here today can and will influence the next iteration of the Brighter Outcomes, Better Futures.

I look forward to this and hearing your contributions on this very important issue which has been my life’s work.

Thank you.

ENDS