Plea for social partners to help tackle poverty

THE structural causes behind poverty must be urgently addressed in the upcoming social partnership discussions, it was warned yesterday.

Combat Poverty director Helen Johnston said local authorities and regional programmes had a key role to play in tackling poverty. “Structural factors such as unemployment, age dependency, lone parenthood, illness and lack of qualifications are paramount in determining poverty levels,” she said, at a conference in NUI Maynooth, part-hosted by the National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA).

“The partnership talks and Budget 2006 offer real opportunities to tackle these structural issues.”