Young children spending their earliest years living in hotels are not able to crawl properly, it has emerged.
Many children are also suffering from the effects of eating cheap fast food with schools having to treat them for pain in their teeth and gums.
The shocking revelation was made by a Dublin school teacher today at the Children’s Rights Alliance political briefing on the No Child 2020 anti-poverty campaign.
Pat Courtney, Principal of Saint Vincent’s National School in the north inner city said: "The commando crawl is a common occupational therapy test and we are seeing kids who do not have that segmental development because they have grown up in buggies and cots without space to crawl - it’s about developmental milestones in terms of a child’s development
He continued: “We are bringing kids to our local dentist as their mouths are full of abscesses from eating cheap high sugar foods and in the school we have had to buy them calpol to deal with the pain.”
Minister Regina Doherty said: “There should never be an acceptable number of children living in homelessness, living in consistent poverty the aim has to be zero, I know we will never reach it but the aim has to be there."
