CHILDREN’S CHARITY Barnardos would be willing to support some cuts in child benefit if it resulted in a more targeted system, its chief executive told an Oireachtas committee yesterday.
The charity had told Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton that it would be “prepared as an organisation to support and defend difficult decisions in relation to child benefit if they resulted in a more targeted system,” Fergus Finlay said.
While he wanted “no cuts in child benefit”, if this were done it needed to be “much more sophisticated” than crude cuts in previous budgets which did not compensate for low income.
Ireland should have a “universal system” of child benefit which was “perhaps lower” than the current level but was “very well targeted” with focused add-ons “to make real changes in the lives of families”, he said.
This was “unpopular and difficult” but was the “type of change we have to be talking about in Ireland”, he said.
People Before Profit TD Joan Collins said there needed to be “no more cuts in child benefit” as people were “already cut to the bone”.
Mr Finlay was presenting to the Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Social Protection and Education yesterday on education and children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
He told the committee that education cutbacks, such as special needs assistants, language support teachers and resource teachers, were a disaster not just for the children but for the State.
“It has no great effect on children that are already well-equipped but these are not the children we need to worry about,” he said.
The cuts in resources were “petty cash” but the social and economic consequences were “multiple”, he said.
Fianna Fáil Senator Averil Power said her party was “wrong” and “incredibly ill-advised” to begin these cuts. “The current Government in continuing them and deepening them in some areas are making a huge mistake,” she added.
“Our experience suggests a link between good early education and school completion and a lack of school completion and continuing lifelong social disadvantage,” Mr Finlay said.
Cuts to the one-year preschool education scheme would be a “complete scandal” and the charity wanted the scheme expanded, Mr Finlay said.
He raised concerns about the lack of standards and curriculum across preschool education which was “extremely variable”.
