Word of the week: pusillanimous. Meaning, literally, small-minded and, by extension, cowardly, timid, faint-hearted. It seems to have dropped out of political speech – the Dáil record has only one usage this century and only three since 1978. But if you want to hear what pusillanimity sounds like, listen to the Taoiseach at the Ploughing Championships last week.
For at least two years, Fine Gael and the Government have been nerving themselves up to do a big thing: take 40,000 children out of poverty at the stroke of a pen. This can be done with a measure that has been working its way through the policymaking establishment, into the Civil Service and up into the thoughts of taoisigh: a second, means-tested level of benefit for the poorest children.
Almost all OECD countries have such supplementary child benefits targeted specifically at low-income families. The Republic doesn’t. We have the monthly payment of €140 per child that goes to every relevant family regardless of income. Then there’s a Qualified Child extra payment you can receive as part of unemployment benefit. And, if you get a job and therefore lose this benefit, you can apply for the back to work family dividend or the working family payment.
But these extra payments are extremely difficult to get if you are self-employed or in temporary or precarious work – the kind of jobs that people who are trying to move off welfare generally get. So the system in effect excludes many of the children it is meant to help. It’s a classic poverty trap.
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For 12 years now, there has been a consensus that the State needs to simplify the system by introducing an automatic top-up to child benefit for the families most in need. It’s hard to think of any policy measure that has such wide support from experts, civil society groups, employers, unions and the Civil Service.
It has been recommended by everyone who has looked systematically at the tax and welfare systems, including the current Government’s Commission on Taxation and Welfare, the National Economic and Social Council and the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). It’s been on the official political agenda since the then Fine Gael/Labour government published the first report of the Advisory Group on Tax and Social Welfare in February 2012.
That group expressed “a strong preference ... towards a two-tier child income support payment approach because of its potential to rationalise the overall child income support system while minimising work disincentives”. This recommendation went to a special ministerial steering group, made up of the ministers for finance, social protection, public expenditure and children – where it withered and died.
It’s worth noting that the advisory group that started the push for this policy change was not representative of what right-wingers like to dismiss as the “poverty lobby”. It was impeccably Establishment, drawn from the top layers of the Civil Service, including the Department of Finance and the Revenue Commissioners, the consultants Price Waterhouse Coopers and even the Dublin Chamber of Commerce.
There are hundreds of thousands of Irish adults who were children when the State first started talking about this measure and who could have been saved from the long-term consequences of poverty
So this isn’t a remotely controversial proposal. And it’s known to be an extremely effective one. Last year, a rigorous analysis by Barra Roantree and Karina Doorley for the ESRI and Community Foundation Ireland found that it would, by itself, take more than 40,000 children out of poverty.
For nearly two years now, Fine Gael has been clearing its throat for an announcement of the reform of the child benefit system to introduce this automatic second payment for those most in need. At end of 2022, when he resumed his position as taoiseach, Leo Varadkar said his ambition was “to make Ireland the best country in Europe to be a child”. He described child poverty as “a national emergency”. In September 2023, the Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe said “a reduction of child poverty will be a theme of the [2024] budget”.
This was the build-up to the big reveal. There was a very widespread assumption that the new child benefit payment would be a centrepiece of last year’s budget. And then – nothing. Varadkar decided to go out not with a bang, but with a whimper. The budget had a few short-term measures aimed at child poverty but the long-term-term impact was, as Doorley put it, “negligible”.
This was a pitiful response to what Varadkar rightly called an unfolding social emergency. While Ireland has a literal embarrassment of riches, child poverty is actually rising. The proportion of children living in material deprivation rose from 17.7 per cent in 2022 to 20.1 per cent in 2023 – an increase of 30,000, bringing the overall figure to 230,000.
The only consolation was messaging from Government which suggested that the failure to act on child benefit was just a postponement. Varadkar said “the proposal has real merit” but “would not be possible to introduce in 2024″. The implication was that the technical work would be done and the measure would follow in Budget 2025.
And then, last week, Harris casually announced that it’s not happening. He “certainly doesn’t rule out the idea of having two rates of child benefit” and claims that “there’s a roadmap to how you get there”. But he absolutely ruled out “being able to do it in the budget”: “I don’t believe even administratively that it would be possible to do it in this budget,” he said.
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Translation: it’s all eyes on the election now and children don’t have a vote. There are hundreds of thousands of Irish adults who were children when the State first started talking about this measure and who could have been saved from the long-term consequences of poverty. But we’re going to leave another generation of kids to grow up in deprivation because it’s all too much to get our heads around right now.
But hey, kids – we have a roadmap. Just hang on in there and try not to get too angry and ashamed about being poor in a rich country. And at least you now have a good word for the weakness of will that leaves you trapped.
