A week after Joseph P. Kennedy III told Newsmax he would "take a look" at Hungary's child care policy, a top Hungarian official said Monday that the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán "welcome[s] his words" and hoped to invite the U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland to a family conference to be held in Budapest in September.
"It's a good thing to recognize the Hungarian family policy," Gergely Gulyás, minister of the Prime Minister's office, told U.S. reporters at the Hungarian Embassy in Washington, D.C.
For more than a decade, Orbán's government has invested 5% of Hungary's gross domestic product in its pro-family agenda.
Part of the agenda, spelled out by then-Minister of Family and Youth, current Hungarian President Katalin Novak, in March of 2019, includes the eventual building of 70,000 new child care centers to provide care for children whose parents wish to return to work.
Speaking with reporters and representatives of the British and Irish communities a week earlier, Kennedy identified child care as one of the major economic concerns of Northern Ireland. When asked by Newsmax about the Hungarian government's approach to the issue, Kennedy replied: "We'll take a look at it."
Other policies, which were enhanced and expanded under Hungary's Family Protection Action Plan "to correct Hungary's demographic decline," include paid leave of up to three years for mothers and fathers, with a guaranteed similar level upon return to work, and making every young married couple eligible for an interest-free loan of $35,000.
Early signs of success for this policy, including the rising number of marriages and the growing birthrate, are evidence that "'migration only' is not the solution" to address a declining population, according to Gulyás.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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