Debate contribution: Child Poverty

Debate contribution by Ms Sian Mulholland on 14 October 2025.

MLA

Ms Sian Mulholland

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

14 October 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Child Poverty

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5180714

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I thank the signatories to the motion genuinely. I welcome any and every opportunity to continue the conversation about child poverty and to keep it at the forefront of our minds. I will not rehearse the catalogue of perceived shortcomings and the basic problems that we see in the draft anti-poverty strategy. The Northern Ireland Anti-Poverty Network, Children in Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People, the Cliff Edge Coalition, the expert panel and the strategy group have all set them out with clarity, and I do not think that I would do them justice by just repeating them. The Northern Ireland Office and the Public Accounts Committee have also spelled out what they think was wrong with previous child poverty strategies and how to fix them. Their responses offer the evidence-based alternatives that we need. We need a rights-based, life cycle, intersectional strategy with time-bound, measurable actions, clear accountability and proper resourcing, grounded in lived experience. My focus today is on what I see as a weakness — the legality. As the Ulster University submission by Dr Mark Simpson, Prof Gráinne McKeever and Dr Ciara Fitzpatrick made clear, the draft, as we see it, fails to meet the Executive's duty to adopt a strategy based on objective need. By the Honourable Lord Justice Treacy's test, a lawful strategy must have a start, a middle and an end, with measurable outcomes. The draft has a start — we can see that — but there are no measurable endpoints or timelines, and the outcomes are vague means, not ends. It also ducks the objective need element, offering no single consistent test of who actually needs the help most. Taken together, it is not yet a lawful plan of action, and I think that it leaves the Executive exposed to challenge again. I ask this: what are we doing, if we are knowingly putting forward a strategy that, so far, is not measurable or target driven and is not clearly anchored in objective need? Without those clear targets and budgets, I do not believe that it can be effective, meaning that the children whom it claims to help will continue to suffer. We support the call for a Northern Ireland child payment, as we have previously. Whilst there are issues with the Scottish scheme, it shows the way. It sets statutory targets that are bolstered by that payment. Analysis has shown that that payment reduced relative child poverty by around four to five percentage points. That has lifted thousands of children out of poverty. Whilst analysis has also shown that, yes, Scotland has not met every interim target, the point is much greater than that. It is about the fact that Scotland has targets in situ. It measures progress and can adjust policy as and when it needs to and when it sees what is and is not working. We can learn something from that model. I attended a Rising Together Against Poverty event at the start of September with lots of community and voluntary sector organisations. I heard very clearly that a cash-first approach was the most effective and impactful way to immediately help families. That approach worked in Scotland. The MLA for East Belfast David Brooks said that "throwing money at the problem" does not work. Respectfully, thousands of children in Scotland would disagree with that.

No. I have a lot to get through, David. If I have time at the end, I will let you in. Research from the Republic of Ireland also shows the impact of combining that cash and in-kind support. According to Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in 2025, when you count the child payments and the in-work supports, alongside free preschool meals and free school meals, more than 150,000 children were lifted out of poverty. Closer to home, I turn to the 'Welfare Mitigations Review', which was led by Les Allamby. It found that offsetting the two-child limit and bolstering family incomes with those new payments is exactly the kind of targeted intervention that we should see in an anti-poverty strategy. As I have said many times, poverty does not just happen in silos, and we have a society that cannot tackle it in silos. We already have a law to make Departments work together: the Children's Services Co-operation Act (Northern Ireland) 2015. Recommendation 9 in the Public Accounts Committee's report on child poverty said that it is clear that the Act is not being used to its full potential. It recommended that the Department of Finance work with all Departments to remove the barriers and bring forward an action plan. I hope that that Act can be used, whether it is around the scrutiny of the strategy or cross-departmental working. It is clear that we could be doing so much, but, right now, the draft anti-poverty strategy is not going to fulfil the objectives that the Minister has set out so far.

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

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:36 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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