AISSN Webinar briefing: Child Poverty on the Island of Ireland.

On April 16^th, AISSN hosted its second webinar of the year on ‘Child Poverty on the Island of Ireland’. Presentations were given by Louise Bayliss, head of Social Justice and Social Policy at St Vincent De Paul and Christine Ellison, Senior Analyst with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) in Northern Ireland (NI).

Speaking about the situation in the Republic of Ireland (RoI), Louise indicated that progress is being made on child poverty and the consistent poverty rate for children has fallen from 8.5 to 7.8%. However, a key point she made during the seminar is that this is a partial story. The data by the Central Statistics Office for the Survey of Income and Living Conditions (SILC) has limitations including the fact that it does not capture poverty rates within marginalised groups such as Traveller and Roma children. This is an important point because children are not a homogenous group and improvements in standard of living are not shared equally. In addition, the decrease in child poverty coincides with an increase in child homelessness and child homelessness appears to be driving the homeless crisis in the Republic of Ireland.

The main detail the SILC dataset can provide, which is based on data collected on household structure, is the situation with respect to children living in one parent families. For children living with a parent in receipt of One Parent Family Payment (OPFP) which is the main income support for single parents in the Republic of Ireland, Louise pointed to four reasons why  children in this cohort are at higher risk of poverty:

In this context plans for a new second tier child support payment need to be considered carefully. It will be important that there is no cliff edge for those who will qualify for the payment and that no-one becomes worse off than their current situation with respect to child income support entitlements. A proposal for this payment, based on ESRI research, which would involve the replacement of existing supports (Working Family Payment and existing means tested child support payments in respect of certain social welfare payments) with a new second tier child payment appears to be challenging in this respect.  This is a point also emphasised by the Tax Strategy Group. As the ESRI research indicates 100,000 children would lose out and 233,000 would gain with the groups experiencing most losses belonging to the three lowest income deciles.

Speaking about the situation in Northern Ireland, Christine Ellison indicated that, in contrast to RoI, progress in reducing poverty rates has stalled in the last five years. Drawing on the JRF report for 2025 and an ARK policy briefing, 110,000 children are living in poverty in NI out of a total of 330,000. The overall poverty rate is approximately 17% while the child poverty rate is 24%. This is based on a poverty measurement of household income below 60 per cent of the UK median. Drilling into those figures further, Christine highlighted a number of key characteristics of poverty in NI overall and specifically child poverty:

• the risk of poverty is not evenly distributed and there are very significant spatial differences. The highest level of child poverty in NI is in West Belfast here 33 per cent of children are living in poverty.

• employment is not the answer to eradicating poverty in NI. 60% of working age adults living in poverty and two thirds of children in poverty living in a household where an adult is working. The quality and security of employment matters, as do general costs of living.

• the risk of in-work poverty is particularly high in certain sectors including agriculture, arts and retail, hospitality, and health and social work/social care. The prevalence of low pay in these sectors is driving in-work poverty.

• childcare is another significant structural barrier to eradicating child poverty in NI. The high costs of childcare act as a barrier in particular to second earners and single parents preventing them from taking up work or moving to better paid work.

• changing trends in housing costs are also a factor. In the past lower housing costs in NI would have buffered risk of poverty, however, this is no longer the case.  Rising housing costs have occurred very quickly.  Social housing supplies are inadequate and consequently the prevalence of poverty amongst private renters is noticeably increasing.

• financial resilience is deteriorating – 46% of adults have less than £1,500 in savings, making them very vulnerable to any income shocks and increases to the cost of living.

In contrast to RoI, where the government is moving towards introducing a new second- tier child payment with a public consultation on its design due shortly, in NI the main policy development has been the removal of the two-child limit affecting families in receipt of the child element of Universal Credit.  This came into effect in April 2026. This is estimated to benefit 14,000 children in NI which still leaves a substantial amount of children living in poverty.  Modelling work by JRF on a targeted child payment for low-income families in and out of work shows it has the potential to reduce the child poverty rate by up to 5 percentage points.  

In summary, headline child poverty rates in RoI appear to be improving while they are stalled in NI. Both presentations pointed to nuances in the data which point to particular risk factors and to some shared characteristics with respect to child poverty in both jurisdictions. In particular, housing costs are a major issue, as are childcare costs which present as a significant issue for one parent families in RoI and are related to the prevalence of in-work poverty in NI.

Policy discussions in both jurisdictions are currently revolving around the potential of targeted, second-tier child support payments. In RoI proposals are in train for a new second-tier child support payment however, its design will need to be carefully calibrated to ensure it does not leave any family worse off. Research by JRF demonstrates the child poverty reduction potential of a second-tier payment, if something similar were to be contemplated in NI.