Speech by the Ombudsman for Children, Dr. Niall Muldoon, at the Healthy Food for All Towards a National Response to Food Poverty for Children and Young People in Ireland National Conference<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
It is a pleasure for me to attend this important Conference dedicated to considering a National response to the important issue of food poverty among children and young people living in Ireland. I would like to thank Mary Van Lieshout and all at\u00a0Healthy Food for All<\/i>\u00a0for the kind invitation to address you this morning.<\/p>\n
In February of this year I was very privileged to have been appointed Ombudsman for Children. As many of you will be aware, the Office was established in 2004 under the Ombudsman for Children Act, 2002. The Act provides for my independence in fulfilling my overall statutory mandate to promote and monitor the rights and welfare of children up to the age of 18 living in Ireland.<\/p>\n
My corresponding statutory functions encompass the traditional role of an Ombudsman to protect the rights of individuals or groups by independently and impartially investigating complaints made about public bodies. Since its establishment, the Ombudsman for Children\u2019s Office has dealt with over 10,000 complaints made by, or on behalf of, children in relation to the administrative actions, or inactions, of public bodies, which have had, or may have had, an adverse effect on the child or children concerned.<\/p>\n
However, the Ombudsman for Children Act also invests my Office with a set of additional statutory functions, which are broadly concerned with promoting children\u2019s rights and welfare. Among my Office\u2019s positive obligations in this regard are:<\/p>\n
The relationship between this function and the Office\u2019s statutory function to investigate complaints is complementary \u2013 they inform and support each other. Indeed, there is no question that having these dual functions strengthens the capacity of my Office to work effectively for, and with, children. During the last ten years, the OCO has taken a versatile approach to engaging the complementary relationship between these two functions.<\/p>\n
By way of example, the 2002 Act provides that, when investigating complaints, the Office must have regard to the best interests of the child concerned and in so far as practicable, give due consideration to the child\u2019s wishes. As such, the Act places two fundamental children\u2019s rights principles at the heart of the OCO\u2019s approach to handling complaints. However, when investigating complaints, we do not investigate whether or not children\u2019s rights have been, or may have been, infringed.<\/p>\n
In light of this, the Office has engaged its complementary functions under Section 7 of the 2002 Act to undertake a children\u2019s rights analysis of a reflective sample of our investigations. Conducted by Professor Ursula Kilkelly (2011), this analysis of public administrative processes affecting children and investigated by the OCO found evidence of:<\/p>\n
I bring this specific example to your attention because the policies, procedures and administrative practices employed by public bodies, together with the broader culture of public administration, necessarily give shape to the State\u2019s engagement with issues affecting children, including the issue of food poverty. Effective adoption of a rights-based approach to addressing these issues will require, among other things, the deficits such as those I have just highlighted are addressed.<\/p>\n
Since its establishment, the OCO has had occasion through its complaints-handling work to engage with several elements of the complex, multi-dimensional problem that is child poverty in Ireland. We have considered various components of family support. We have examined issues relating to homelessness and housing, including provision and supports for young people who become homeless on their own, as well as for children whose families have become homeless and we\u2019ve also examined difficulties experienced by children and their families accessing suitable social housing. We have seen how poverty can curtail children\u2019s opportunity to develop and fulfil their potential in and through education. Equally, we have seen how poverty can impact on children\u2019s access to the health services they need and when they need them. I have no doubt that food poverty is among the significant challenges faced by children and families we have engaged with over the years. However, it is other manifestations of child poverty, such as those I have just mentioned, which have been to the fore of complaints to my Office.<\/p>\n
It will surprise no one present here today that baseline research conducted for the OCO identified children living in poverty as one of several groups who face multiple barriers to the realisation of their rights. Through cases we have considered, we have seen and heard what this means for individual children, young people and their families in the context of their daily lives. Over the period since the UN Committee last examined Ireland\u2019s progress with fulfilling its commitments under the UNCRC, the proportion of children living in consistent poverty has increased from 6.8% (2008) to 11.7% (2013). This means that, according to the most recent available data, some 137,000 children are living in consistent poverty.\u00a0 The Department of Children and Youth Affairs\u2019 national policy framework for children and young people,\u00a0Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures<\/i>, contains a national child-specific target to lift over 70,000 children out of consistent poverty by 2020, a reduction of at least two-thirds on the 2011 level.\u00a0 However, the Government\u2019s most recent report on the progress made to achieve the national social target for poverty reduction noted that the increase in the number of children living in consistent poverty between 2011 and 2013 meant that at least 101,000 children would have to be lifted out of poverty to meet the target population in 2020.\u00a0 As the number of children living in poverty increased further in 2013, the Government must revise its child-specific target to take account of this reality.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the target set out in\u00a0Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures\u00a0<\/i>\u2013 a reduction of at least two thirds on the 2011 level \u2013 envisages that as many as 37,000 children could be left living in consistent poverty by 2020.\u00a0 During 2015, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child will commence its examination of Ireland\u2019s progress with implementing its commitments under the UNCRC since 2006. Among the recommendations that my Office will be making in our alternative report to the Committee is that\u00a0the State should revise its target in respect of child poverty.<\/b><\/p>\n
Against this backdrop, I would like to turn now to one of the questions that today\u2019s conference will explore: what are the elements of a rights-based approach to food poverty among children and young people in Ireland? I hope it may prove helpful to your discussions today if I focus the remainder of my address on recalling several core components of a rights-based approach, before making some concluding comments.<\/p>\n
Ratified by Ireland in 1992, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) provides a useful reference point for identifying key elements of a rights-based approach to addressing food poverty among children:<\/p>\n
In line with this, I was recently very honoured to be invited to participate in a symposium as part of the \u201cPresidents Initiative on Ethics in our Society\u201d and at it President Higgins highlighted that \u201cthe poor very clearly pay the price of an economic crisis, NOT through share price collapses BUT rather in the value and quality of their life existence<\/i>\u201d and he went on to emphasise that the right to Nutrition, on a global level, needs to look at both malnutrition AND obesity so that our children are no longer hampered by either concern. This is extremely important in today\u2019s Ireland because obesity in children and adults is not just a sign of excess \u2013 as is stated on the Healthy Food for All website \u201cLow-income households spend a relatively higher share of their income on food, however, despite this, they consume a less nutritionally-balanced diet and suffer from higher rates of diet-related chronic diseases<\/i>\u201d. Therefore food poverty is not just the absence of food but often the absence of the correct form of food and as President Higgins highlighted, MUST be seen as an ethical consideration, for this and all countries.<\/p>\n To conclude, I would like to bring to your attention a number of points that my Office will be highlighting in our alternative report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. While broad in scope, I hope that they may be germane to today\u2019s deliberations on fashioning a national response to food poverty among children:<\/p>\n The State must ensure that the steps it takes to counteract the impact of the recession and indeed improve on the situation that obtained prior to the economic crisis are driven by the Convention.<\/p>\n This is not simply a question of laudable or prudent social policy; it is a matter of international legal obligation.<\/p>\n Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures\u00a0<\/i>commits the Government to exploring the development of cross-Government estimates for expenditure on children and young people \u2013 and I welcome that commitment. As noted by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in his report, no Government can claim to be fulfilling children\u2019s rights to the maximum extent of its available resources unless it is able to identify the proportion of its budgets allocated to children, both directly and indirectly.\u00a0 This does not imply that there should be a separate budget for children, but rather that budgets should be presented in such a way that specific allocations to children can be identified.\u00a0 In its report to the UN Committee, I will be recommending accordingly that:<\/p>\n\n
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