I suppose one of the major difficulties—and it is an ongoing one—is to get departments to adopt a wider perspective. Government departments or ministries are still largely focused on their own area of responsibility. This has a silo effect, as we often refer to it here, whereby they see their main objective as achieving the right outcomes in their area. So it's a matter of trying to guess a cross-cutting approach among departments when looking at dealing with people who are in poverty. That applies at both a national and a local level. That's why we have introduced this life cycle approach, to try to get people focused on outcomes that require cross-departmental cooperation and integration, and so on. I think that has been one of our greatest challenges.
I think it's also fair to say that there's always a tension between the economic perspective and the social perspective. On the one hand, people always say, and quite rightly so, that economic development is paramount. But at the same time, we need to try to convince people that you can promote economic development through the social dimension as well. It's a bit of a more long-term objective. One of the problems with social supports is that they can take a while to bear fruit—or to be seen to bear fruit. If you want to invest in children, for example, it could be 20 years before you see the fruits of that. But what is very obvious is that if you don't invest in them, you can see the fruits today of lack of investment in the past. So there is a need for a longer-term perspective. Of course, that also arises in relation to the aging of the population and the need to make provision for people down the road, as the population in Ireland is aging as well.
I suppose these are the things: the need for a cross-cutting perspective, a more long-term perspective, and to see the advantages economically of social investment. It's happening, but it takes a while for it to sink in.