Rise in number of children and their families living in poverty, according to ESRI

They also come as a child poverty event in Dublin heard that schools have now resorted to donating small fridges to homeless students just so they and their families can have access to basic essentials such as milk.

The ESRI study found that the child poverty rate after housing costs has increased from 20% in 2020 to 22% in 2023, while the material deprivation rate for children rose from 17.7% in 2022 to 20.1% in 2023.

About 230,000 children suffered from material deprivation in 2023, an increase of 30,000 children compared with 2022.

Material deprivation is defined as those living without two or more essentials from a list of 10 items, including things such as two pairs of strong shoes, a warm waterproof coat, a meal with meat or a vegetarian equivalent every second day, and home heating during the last year.

Among the population, the ESRI said half of those renting from an approved housing body, local authority or receiving Housing Assistance Payment meet the criteria for living in material deprivation.

Inflation has left a person’s average disposable income lower than it was two years earlier across the population, falling by 3% after a “decade of uninterrupted growth”.

At the event, one Limerick principal, Traci Tobin from St Micheal’s infants, said that, after teaching for 26 years in a Deis school, she has never seen students who are so desperate.

She said schools are now donating food to families because it so challenging for them to be able to afford nutritious foods.

The event, held by the Children’s Rights Alliance, heard a number of children receive all their weekly meals from school — breakfast from breakfast clubs, lunch from the school meals programme, and dinner from after-school clubs.

Limerick’s St Mary’s national school principal Eoghan O’Byrne said his school provides three meals a day, funded by various methods, to pupils.

These families are not even reliant, they are over-reliant on the school system to provide food.

Family Resource Centre National Forum CEO Fergal Landy questioned how that is impacting on families.

“I don’t want to see any family not cooking an evening meal or sitting around and breaking bread with their children because their view is ‘they got a hot meal’ during the day in school,” he said, stressing that this is not a judgement on families in poverty.

He also said he has received WhatsApp messages from its centres about summer camps now becoming initiatives to deliver food.