Opening statement: Joint Committee on Children and Equality Child Poverty and Deprivation

Opening statement

Ombudsman for Children’s Office

Joint Committee on Children and Equality

Child Poverty and Deprivation

22^nd January 2026

 

Thank you to the Committee for inviting the Ombudsman for Children’s Office (OCO) to provide our perspectives on child poverty and deprivation.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) gives all children the right to an adequate standard of living. However, the State is currently failing to uphold this right as over 260,000 children live in households experiencing deprivation. The reality behind these figures are children growing up in homes that are cold and mouldy; children going without a decent breakfast or arriving to school in a uniform that is worn out or doesn’t quite fit. It is the reality of not inviting friends over or going to a birthday party or having a local park nearby to play safely.

Poverty not only deprives children of their basic needs, but it also deprives them of opportunity and reaching their potential.

There is no quick fix to child poverty, but we can solve it. To do that, we need to recognise that childhood poverty is driven by structural injustices rooted in the housing crisis, low income, and inadequate provision of services for children.

While Ireland’s system of government and public administration is organised along sectoral lines, children and their lives do not fit neatly into siloed sectors. Coordination is crucial in the context of child poverty, where measures sit across the remit of several government departments, including Children, Education, Social Protection, Health and Housing.

Since the establishment of the Child Poverty and Well-Being Unit, there has been greater coordination across Departments. However, a sustained focus on child poverty over the term of this Government will be needed to make a meaningful difference. This must start by implementing child rights budgeting. Despite being recommended by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2016 and in 2023, we are concerned at the lack of sufficient progress on this, which creates difficulties in evaluating the effectiveness of expenditure on children.

Until we have a full understanding of the budgets being made available for, and being spent on, children, we cannot adequately plan and resource children’s services and supports. We also need to integrate Child Rights Impact Assessments (CRIAs) into the budget process, to ensure that fiscal decisions are compliant with obligations under the UNCRC.

In terms of service provision, we need to provide access to universal basic services in line with Ireland’s commitments under the EU Child Guarantee and strengthen interagency coordination and collaboration at national and local levels. Our complaint and investigations team see daily the negative effects that deficits in service provision have on children. Families and children should be able to access the supports they need in a timely manner and without having to navigate a fragmented system.

The essence of any child poverty strategy should be increased investment in prevention and early intervention measures. It is not acceptable that we continue to allocate significant resources to plug gaps in the system in a short-term way, allowing issues to get worse and storing up problems for further down the line leading to a much greater human, and economic cost.

The social protection system must provide for a Minimum Essential Standard of Living for children and use evidence to direct available resources to those at greatest risk. Article 2 of the UNCRC, requires States to actively identify individual children and groups of children who may require special measures in the realisation of their rights.  Disabled children, Traveller and Roma children, children growing up in one parent families and those in kinship care families face a much greater risk of poverty and supports must be provided in recognition of this risk. Children living in direct provision can face extreme deprivation and yet the Child Benefit payments promised in budget 2024 has never been provided.

Related to this is our concerns regarding the deficits in the collection of comprehensive disaggregated data on marginalised groups of children as highlighted by the UN Committee. Efforts to include data on the living standards of Traveller and Roma children, children seeking asylum and children in emergency accommodation should also be made to ensure those not counted in official poverty statistics are represented.

Most importantly, we need to listen to children and ensure their voices are heard, as is their right. Only by listening to children, and including them in decision making, will we get closer to tackling child poverty.

Finally, the OCO believes that full and direct incorporation of the UNCRC into domestic law is the single most important thing we can do to protect and promote children’s rights. It puts children and their rights at the heart of every decision. It gives us a stronger basis to ensure we are keeping our promises to children, and that includes a childhood free from poverty.

• 22 Eanair 2026
• Cineál: Ráiteas
• Ábhar: Cosaint Leanaí, Oideachas, Sláinte, Tithíocht