Debate contribution: Child Poverty

Debate contribution by Mr Nick Mathison on 15 April 2024.

MLA

Mr Nick Mathison

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

15 April 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Child Poverty

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4483016

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I support the amendment, and I also thank the Members who tabled the motion. I hope, however, that the amendment will receive support. I feel that it draws out not only the need for the strategy to be appropriately resourced but the necessity to provide a prevention strategy that is at the heart of any anti-poverty interventions. The amendment also highlights the need for child poverty interventions to be embedded in the Executive's anti-poverty strategy, which should have measurable outcomes at its heart. This is a statistic that many Members referenced, but the 'Northern Ireland Poverty and Income Inequality Report' has shown us that the percentage of children who are living in relative poverty in Northern Ireland has risen from 18% in 2021-22 to 24% in 2022-23. That equates to approximately 109,000 children. It is important that we just take stock of the sheer numbers of children whom that is impacting. It is not acceptable, and we cannot continue on that upward trajectory. It is high time that the commitments that were made in previous mandates to tackle poverty are now delivered on. The Audit Office report made it plain that any new anti-poverty strategy should include an action plan containing clearly defined indicators and targets that are aimed at quantifying and reducing poverty and that those should detail early intervention and prevention, with a clear demonstration of the links between the actions that we are going to carry out and how they will reduce the scale and impact of poverty. Thinking about early intervention, I will focus some of my remarks on the role of education in that space. Much has been said about the cross-departmental aspect to the matter and how we cannot say that it is just for the Department for Communities to deliver. We know that children who grow up in poverty are more likely to have lower levels of educational attainment, and it is incredibly worrying, therefore, that, for more and more families simply accessing education, the cost of just getting children to school is becoming a huge financial burden. Any anti-poverty strategy needs to tackle that. With that in mind, since the restoration of devolution, all parties have supported motions to tackle school uniform costs, reinstate holiday hunger payments and review the criteria for free school meals, so I urge the Minister of Education once again to pursue that work as quickly as possible but in conjunction with the Executive colleagues as part of the wider anti-poverty strategy. I would welcome it if the Minister for Communities today could clarify what some of the work that has been done with the Department of Education has been on the development of an anti-poverty strategy. The expert panel that produced the report 'A Fair Start' highlighted that addressing educational underachievement that has been brought about as a consequence of social disadvantage extends beyond the Education Department alone. It said that if we are serious about wanting to see fundamental change for the benefit of our most disadvantaged children, an anti-poverty strategy must prioritise education and learning as a clear route out of poverty. I cannot talk about issues on education and how it connects to an anti-poverty strategy without mentioning the other strategy that we have talked much of in the Chamber: the development of the early learning and childcare strategy. Childcare is an incredibly important anti-poverty and early intervention tool, and it is vital that an anti-poverty strategy captures that properly. Working families are struggling with the crippling impacts of extortionate childcare costs in Northern Ireland, but, sadly, we still see progress going very slowly from the Department of Education, and I ask that that work be continued at pace. An anti-poverty strategy that is genuinely cross-departmental and concerned with early intervention and prevention rather than expensive late interventions, which other Members mentioned, must have early education and childcare as key elements, and all Departments with a role in this space — yes, that means Education, but also Communities, Health and Economy — must work together in the interests of children in Northern Ireland. Any child who is living in poverty is one too many, so, as the amendment clearly outlines, we must ensure that we have in any strategy specific measurable targets alongside monitoring mechanisms that will measure outcomes and allow us to learn not only about what we are doing well but about what needs to be improved. We must not return to the Chamber in a few years' time to debate the issue again and to bemoan the delay in the delivery of an anti-poverty strategy. How many other children will suffer if we allow that to be the case? We must —.

Yes, I will give way.

I thank the Member for his intervention. We would certainly advocate for urgency on this. The key for us is that the child poverty strategy needs to sit within the wider anti-poverty strategy, and a timeline distracts from that. We must act collectively, collaboratively and comprehensively to deliver for some of our most vulnerable children and families. I commend the amendment to the House on that basis and hope that it receives support.

859 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 10:00 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification