Today marks the beginning of End Child Poverty Week which aims to draw attention to the need for a greater budget allocation for Education Welfare Services.
The Children's Rights Alliance is advocating for a children's budget to be implemented and for Childcare services to be increased from 120 to 210.
Tanya Ward, CEO of The Children's Rights Alliance, is calling for an increase in the budget to cater for the growing numbers of children in need of these services, as there is currently inadequate investment in this area:
"We want to see an increase in Social Welfare of at least €25 in Budget 2024. And that is just to stand still. In 2007, the government benchmarked social welfare payments to what was the Gross Average Industrial Earnings. That's now about 27.5% of the average earnings and what we want to see is that that benchmark is maintained".
The Government's again being urged to bring in a €50 hike in the monthly Child Benefit payment in Budget 2024.
Social Justice Ireland says it would tackle the country's child poverty which remains persistently high.
It believes it would be of particular value to families on the lowest incomes who barely got any increase in last year's budget.
Social Justice Ireland Economic and Social Analyst Collette Bennett says social welfare payments must go up to help them:
"We have a big problem in Ireland where we just haven't invested enough in our education welfare services. We've 120 really just dealing with teachers and children for 4000 schools in Ireland, and we need to see that increased by 90 so they're the kinds of things we'll be putting a focus on as we roll out End Child Poverty Week".
