Is the Taoiseach aware that the latest report published by the Combat Poverty Agency and launched by his colleague, the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Brennan, confirms that 17% of children in this State live in income poverty for five years or more of their young lives? Does the Taoiseach agree that this is unacceptable in one of the wealthiest economies in the world?

Does the Taoiseach further agree that increasing child benefit and other income supports alone is not the whole answer and what we need is a wide-ranging strategy? Does he accept that within the strategy, there must be a commitment and clear plan to combat educational disadvantage? It is my understanding that the Government has a target to reduce class sizes to 20 pupils or fewer for all children under the age of nine years by 2007. Will the Taoiseach ensure the recruitment of the necessary additional teaching staff? Will it be done now? Will he ensure the provision of all the required assessments and the additional teachers required for children with special needs?

Will the Government introduce a primary school database linked to the secondary school database to track attendance levels and flag and help combat early school leaving? Within that strategy, will the Taoiseach also ensure we will have an extension of the school meals programme to all children in disadvantaged areas, which is not currently the case?

In what is supposed to be one of the best educated countries in the world, I expect the Taoiseach will acknowledge that we have a chronic shortage of speech and language therapists. This robs many children of their real opportunities and potential in life. Will the Government increase the number of training places to ensure we have adequate speech and language therapists in place as quickly as possible to correct the severe shortage and difficulties arising therefrom for young people facing into the future?

As the Deputy knows, the recent report also showed 100,000 young people have been taken out of consistent poverty in recent years. We remain firmly committed to eliminating consistent poverty, combating social exclusion, ending marginalisation and creating a fairer society.

We have significantly reduced poverty levels. The last major report in this regard, the UN human development report of late last year, showed that continued substantial increases in social transfers have resulted in real improvements in the living standards of persons depending on them. For this reason, last year, we provided a large increase in social welfare payments, especially the basic State pension and our commitment to get it to 30% of the industrial wage by next year. This will continue to enhance the welfare and overall well-being of those who are caught up in the daily struggle to make ends meet. Children at risk and those of lone parents rank highly in the report the Deputy mentioned, as did carers who look after people with difficulties.

We have dramatically increased the number of teachers. There are 10,000 extra teachers in schools. We weighted this very much towards schools in disadvantaged areas. We did the same in respect of home-school-community liaison posts so that they would not only be in schools, but would link up with homes to try to help children with special difficulties. The case of child assessment services is the same, as psychological services work with home liaison officers to try to deal with families with multiple difficulties. The Deputy has a point on speech therapy, which is why we have substantially increased the number of training places. It is very difficult to find speech therapists from anywhere and vacancies cannot be filled by people from outside the country, as we have done with other positions. Training takes time and there have been difficulties in providing it.

Over 80% of child income support is accounted for by child benefit, whereas ten years ago it was less than 30%, which shows the significant improvements we have made in society in the past decade.