The charity Barnardos has said that children's rights should be central to any future government's policy.
Launching The Barnardos Children's Declaration: A Million Reasons to Get It Right, its chief executive, Fergus Finlay, said: "110,000 children are too hungry, too cold and too corralled in marginalised communities that are products of bad planning and underinvestment."
In the document Barnardos calls for a commitment to hold a referendum on inserting children's rights into the Constitution. A quarter of the State's population is under 18.
Also included are calls for one year of free pre-school education to be made available, initially for children experiencing disadvantage; for a full medical card to be extended to all families whose income is taxed at the standard rate; and for loopholes to be closed in child protection legislation.
"This is our attempt to launch our political manifesto on behalf of the million citizens of Ireland who won't have a vote in the general election," said Mr Finlay.
"I've been involved in writing political manifestos before," added Mr Finlay, a former adviser to the Labour Party, "and I know that at the last minute someone says, 'We need to throw something in there about children'. So it ends up on page 40 of the manifesto. What we want is for these policies to be on page three or four."
Barnardos has also called for 26 weeks of paid parental leave to be added to the 26 weeks of maternity leave currently available. It also suggests that legislation be introduced to establish a 9pm watershed on the broadcasting of alcohol adverts, in order to protect children from drinks industry marketing.
"We're saying, when parents are voting, this is what they should looking for," said Norah Gibbons, director of advocacy at Barnardos. "They shouldn't be asking, 'How much less income tax am I going to pay?', but, 'How is this going to make things better for my child?'"
Ms Gibbons added that while the current Government had not "failed" children entirely, children "are being failed".
"In fact, all of our children are being failed in some ways in the fact that their voice is not yet in the Constitution," she added.
"For Barnardos there are some children who are being failed very much. The children living in foster homes, children living in poverty, the children who are being adopted in inter-country adoption.
"We want their needs to hop up the agenda, to be prioritised and we don't want Ireland failing any child."
Ms Gibbons said she was "optimistic" that political parties will listen to the Barnardos message.
"I think that politicians have now finally heard that early intervention makes a difference. Patching things up later on is no good.
"But I don't want them to hear it just to get votes. I want them to hear it and implement it for the next five years, otherwise another group of children will have grown up and we won't have made a difference for them."
