The Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has said the Department for Communities’ handling of the Child Poverty Strategy is a “catalogue of failures” where children and families are not at its centre.

The scathing “shortfalls” report has been published and makes 11 recommendations to tackle child poverty.

The strategy was initially developed in the office of the First and Deputy First Ministers, then moved to the DfC.

It ran from 2016 to 2022 and no similar scheme has been implemented since its conclusion.

The PAC report said that during its implementation the strategy was not sufficiently targeted or funded and had “unacceptably weak” arrangements for accountability.

The CAP said the child poverty rate had risen from 20% to 24% in 2022-23 and that DFC “seems to be too far away” from those children and families facing poverty.

Talking to Good morning Thursday’s Ulster schedulechairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Daniel McCrossan, said: “Make no mistake, we will be calling those responsible for implementing this strategy before our committee again to ensure that the recommendations have been taken forward.”

McCrossan described the evidence sessions held by the PAC as “absolutely shocking” and said the department was “not racing on this issue”.

“Ministers and the executive have said this is important to them, but we haven’t really seen any action,” he added.

He asked the DfC to confirm that a new anti-poverty strategy would be presented to the Executive by the end of March.

In its report, the Public Accounts Committee considered Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) report on child poverty which was published in March.

Number of children living in poverty in Northern Ireland saw a significant increase in 2022.

They indicated that about 109,000 children or 24% were living in relative poverty, compared to 19% in 2021.

Sheena McMullen from Action for Children NI told the program that “we pay for poverty already so much in so many ways”.

She described the rationale of “funding constraints” for not implementing a child poverty strategy as unjustified.

“The Audit Office found that child poverty costs us £1 billion a year,” she said.

“Poverty is at the root of so many of our policy problems which lead to demands on health services, education services, justice and social care settings.”

Ms McMullen said the report “came at a good time” and the executive office now “needs to show us that they are taking this issue seriously”.

A spokesman for the Department for Communities said: “The Department welcomes the PAC’s interest in this important issue and will take full account of the Committee’s recommendations.”

There are two main measures of low income used by the government. Income is considered to be the money a household has to spend after housing costs are taken into account.

Absolute poverty measures how many people this year cannot afford a set standard of living. The Department for Work and Pensions currently defines it based on the standard of living that an average income could buy you in the year ending March 2011. If your income is 40% lower, after adjusting for prices increasing since then, you are classified as living in absolute poverty.

Relative poverty represents the number of people whose income is 40% below the current average income.

An individual is considered to be in relative poverty if they live in a household with an income below 60% of the typical UK income.

This is a measure of whether those in the lowest-income households are keeping pace with income growth in the entire population.