Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one before. It feels like I’ve written this particular column every year for a decade. And every year it rots still further and gets that bit more putrid. At stake here is the decision by the Government to leave 55,000 children in poverty. That’s the number that could be lifted out of poverty overnight if the Government brought in a second level of child benefit.And yet again we learn that the Government just can’t be bothered. It’s not that it can’t, or even definitively won’t, do it. It’s just that, well, you know, it needs a bit of work and, after all, children don’t vote.A second child benefit payment targeted at the most needy families was first proposed in 2012 by the official Advisory Group on Tax and Social Welfare and strongly endorsed by all the members of that group, including the Department of Finance and the Revenue Commissioners. It’s not controversial. Almost every other OECD country does it. As well as being the morally right thing to do, it is also a fiscal no-brainer. Keeping children in poverty is the worst kind of Government borrowing: the costs of today’s neglect will have to be repaid tenfold in healthcare, crime, lost tax revenues and lost productivity. This is why the top-up payment has been recommended repeatedly by official or semi-official bodies: the Commission on Taxation and Welfare, the National Economic and Social Council and the ESRI. Conversely, over the 14 years it has been on the agenda, I have not heard a government or opposition politician explain why it’s a bad idea.Last year, the ESRI estimated the annual cost of a top-up payment of €285 a month for the children most in need would be €770 million. To put that in context, the Government has just reduced VAT on food businesses, including multinational franchises like McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken, at a full-year cost of €681 million. Year after year, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil agree that the second child benefit payment is a good idea, hint that it is in the works, and then find an excuse not to do it. Thus, in 2023 Leo Varadkar said “the proposal has real merit” but “would not be possible to introduce in 2024”. The implication was that the technical work would be done and the measure would follow in Budget 2025. [ Irish people are 13th happiest in the world yet loneliest in the EU. It doesn’t add upOpens in new window ]Then, in the run-up to Budget 2025, Simon Harris casually dropped the revelation that the work had not yet been done. He said he “certainly doesn’t rule out the idea of having two rates of child benefit” and said that “there’s a roadmap to how you get there”. But alas: “I don’t believe even administratively that it would be possible to do it in this Budget.”Then, in June 2025, Micheál Martin said: “For Budget 2026, I’ve asked my ministerial colleagues to plan and to come forward with measures that will really make the difference to the most vulnerable families and children and to target resources appropriately.”Targeting resources means, in effect, a second means-tested child benefit. He confirmed (apparently) that the work to implement it was finally being done. Officials, he said, were “examining all aspects of that”.But sadly they couldn’t get their act together in time for last year’s Budget. Fear not, though – the Minister for Social Protection Dara Calleary told us last October that the second tier of child benefit is “something that we are looking at within the department, and my officials are doing a lot of work on it”. And he is “confident that we will be in a position to bring a proposal to Government in advance of Budget 2027”.Yet on July 6th, Calleary nonchalantly revealed that his self-confidence was misplaced. In May, his department launched a public consultation on the subject. It issued a desultory “discussion document” with no cost-benefit analysis and no timelines. It felt suspiciously like a delaying tactic.Which, in fact, it was. Calleary told us on July 6th that “officials were examining the submissions”, but he was ”not sure if we’ll have a presentation ready in advance of the budget discussion”. In other words, there will not be a second tier of child benefit in Budget 2027. Sneaked into the discussion document, moreover, was a claim that, even if the Government decides to do it, it will take years to implement: “If it is decided to make significant changes to social welfare payments, it will likely take a number of years to implement those changes. This is because changes to social welfare payments typically require bringing in new legislation or amending existing legislation. It may also require the development of new IT systems to manage the payments.”[ The big questions we’re busy ignoring about what it means to be EuropeanOpens in new window ]This hand-wringing should enrage and alarm all citizens. The assertion that it takes many years to alter legislation and/or develop payment systems is a pathetic claim of paralysis and powerlessness. It’s a State shrugging its shoulders.So even if the Government and the Civil Service were to decide to bring in the second payment next year – which they seem to have no intention of doing – it would be past 2030 before anything happens. In September 2025, the Government committed to reducing consistent child poverty to three per cent or less by 2030. It is currently 8.5 per cent. What is wrong with these people? And why did they go into public life? Is there no trace of idealism left, no pride in the use of power to make a big difference to the life chances of tens of thousands of our most vulnerable citizens? Childhoods pass quickly. The effects of poverty set in early and are increasingly hard to counter each year that goes by. To sit back and watch this happening when you have the capacity to do something about it is the epitome of moral bankruptcy. Learned helplessness is no longer just the excuse for sins of omission – it is the sin itself. Feckless inertia has become actively malign.