Children in poverty would fill Croke Park

THERE are 90,000 children who will remain hungry and uneducated unless immediate action is taken, Barnardos has warned.

The charity said the number of children in poverty, enough to fill Croke Park for next Sunday’s All-Ireland final, was often forgotten as the country enjoys its economic success.

Barnardos chief executive Owen Keenan said: “The debate on child poverty tends to be very sterile, full of graphs and tables. But to us, it’s a reality with children who are hungry and not properly clothed.”

At the launch of the charity’s Children Living Without campaign, Mr Keenan referred to children in a Midlands family who had never seen the sea.

“We were able to get some funding together and get them to Trabolgan in Cork. But you’d find it hard to believe that in an island like this, they’d never seen the sea,” he said.

In the last decade, the number of children living in poverty has fallen from 250,000 to 90,000.

Barnardos believes child poverty can be virtually eradicated in just five years, but not if there are further cutbacks in family support and pre-school services.

The Department of Health pays for many anti-poverty services and it is facing a freeze on spending in the upcoming budget.

Mr Keenan said: “It represents very bad political values if the children in poverty are made to wait longer. It’s also so short-sighted because if you don’t tackle the problem there will be much worse problems later on.”

Children in poverty are much more likely to leave school early and become unemployed.

Of the children who left school with no qualifications, 40% were unemployed compared with only 3% of children who completed the Leaving Certificate.

Mr Keenan said the cost of supporting children in poverty was minimal compared with paying the running costs of facilities for troubled children.

A new special care unit which opened in Limerick cost €5 million to build and costs €1.8m to run annually for five children. “That works out at around €350,000 a year to look after each child, which could pay for a family support scheme for dozens of children,” said Mr Keenan.

Support schemes such as Surestart in Britain and Headstart in the US provide tax breaks, childcare and more pre-school education for children in poverty. They have proven to be very successful.

Barnardos said the extension of similar schemes here would directly tackle child poverty.

The advertisements for the Children Living Without campaign will run nationwide with stark slogans such as: “I’m not hungry to succeed. I’m just hungry.”

Advertising and media companies have paid the full cost of creating and showing the ads.