Combat Poverty wants local authorities to provide fully-serviced playgrounds and to support childcare and pre-school activities.
Mr Jim Walsh, a policy analyst with the agency, said the State did not appear to be taking a leading role in treating children as a social issue, following the revelation that it has more golf courses than playgrounds. "It shows the State is not taking a collective responsibility on this matter. It is basically saying to parents to pay for those facilities themselves," he said.
At a seminar on child poverty in Limerick, he said the provision of playgrounds should be a requirement in the planning of housing estates and form part of county and city development strategies. Providing childcare facilities and early school education were ways of tackling child poverty locally.
"There are smaller families and they do not have other children to mind them. You need places that are safe for children to go," he said. Traditionally, with the emergence of free education, children were seen as an economic asset, the State's future workforce.
The cost of children now appeared to be emerging as a key policy issue with the formulation of the National Children's Strategy and the emergence of childcare as an issue, but State supports were "miserly" compared to other EU countries.
Child income support was about u£25 a week, compared to £35 sterling in Britain.