Cork rights advocate says report reveals spike in child poverty 

Poverty is affecting children at a higher rate than adults, a new report has shown, as the Children’s Rights Alliance (CRA) say it takes four to five generations to break this cycle in Ireland.

The CRA released their 2025 Child Poverty Monitor on Tuesday, which showed “a significant spike” in consistent poverty rates for children.

It explained: “It is children and young people who experienced the sharpest rise in this rate; it increased from 4.8% in 2023, to 8.5% in 2024.

“This equates to an additional 45,107 children experiencing the worst form of poverty in Ireland. To put that in perspective, we are talking about over 100,000 children now living in consistent poverty – feeling the grind of deep poverty and the isolation of social exclusion day in, day out.” 

Dr Naomi Feely, CRA policy director and UCC doctorate alumnus, told The Echo that the figures show a huge amount of children are experiencing “the worst form of poverty”, with their families “unable to meet the cost of basic essentials like replacing worn out shoes”.

She explained: “What we’ve seen the last number of years is an increase in prices generally, while interest has come down to more manageable levels, the cumulative impact of high prices mean it’s very hard for people on low incomes to manage.

“The government have provided one-off responses, but haven’t increased the permanent weekly social welfare rate enough to ensure families can meet these increasing costs.” 

Dr Feely continued: “What we have seen is the issue of food poverty really increasing – there’s been welcome investment from government through things like the hot school meals, we know that a good cohort of children are guaranteed that meal during term time, but during holidays they don’t have access to that.

“Another thing we see is housing - many children are being pushed into homeless accommodation, and there’s a group of children whose parents have moved back to their original family home,” which can lead to overcrowding, she said.

“They might have no space to do their homework, and we see that has resulted in lower reading test scores. 

"It can also impact on parent and child relationships and mental health,” she said, adding that they would like to see targeted measures to help these children, such as a support worker for all children in emergency accommodation.

Dr Feely explained that Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC) data shows that “it takes four to five generations to break the cycle of poverty in Ireland.

“Countries doing well in northern Europe are breaking the cycle within two – we believe this government should commit to breaking it in one generation, by investing in measures across not just the department of social protection, children, education or health but a whole government response.”

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