The Mick Clifford Podcast: Cost of living crisis means less food to eat for children in poverty
Maria O'Dwyer, National Coordinator for the Prevention and Early Intervention Newtwork is Mick's guest on this week's podcast.
The cost of living crisis means having less food to eat on a weekly basis for many of the 90,000 children in poverty, according to a leading researcher in the area. With measures to tackle child poverty expected to feature prominently in next week’s budget, the reality for many children in the current environment is that they may be going hungry for periods every week.
Maria O’Dwyer, national co-ordinator of the Prevention and Early Intervention Network, told The Mick Clifford Podcast that a major intervention by the Government would be to remove 90% of costs for families who are in consistent poverty.
“Families who are for instance on the national childcare scheme, paying €60 to €90 a week for childcare, if we could reduce that to say €20 we could leave significantly more to spend on the weekly shop,” Ms O’Dwyer told the Mick Clifford podcast.
“Parents will tell you they run out of money on Tuesday or Wednesday waiting for payment on Thursday and on those days they might be eating noodles or just toast. That’s a hard image to think of young people in a household having to do that.
"For most of us, the cost of living crisis means the price of the weekly shop has gone up. For these families it just means that they have to eat less.”
Ms O’Dwyer says that she is hopeful that measures will be taken in the budget to make inroads to tackling child poverty. Last December, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar set up unit within his department to tackle the issue and he has said that it is his vision that Ireland becomes the best country to be a child.
“We’re still a long way from that,” Ms O’Dwyer says. “But if we can do things like antenatal supports, going back to addressing this even before the child is born, we can make some difference.”
