Shocking levels of child poverty in Ireland say Barnardos

A SHOCKING report by children’s charity Barnardos will show tens of thousands of Irish children are still living in poverty.

The pending report, due to be published next month, will paint a grim picture of so-called wealthy Ireland where child poverty is the second highest in the EU despite a drop in the figures.

According to the charity which worked with 12,000 families and children last year, an estimated 90,000 children live in 'consistent poverty'.

The charity has warned that 'angry, passionate and determined action is needed to stop children continuing to live without'.

Chief executive Owen Keenan is confident a new awareness campaign will stimulate robust and informed debate on the number of children affected by poverty and the lack of economic policies to tackle the problem.

"We see what poverty looks like every day," he said, "we see which children are going to school hungry, we see which children are going to school without proper clothing."

Heavily-backed by sectors of the advertising industry, the charity has launched the final phase of its multi-media advertising campaign, Every Child Matters.

Under the theme Children Living Without, the extensive advertising campaign is also highlighted on the charity's website.

Barnardos, planning to maintain a sustained campaign until early 2004, is hoping the devastating impact of child poverty will spur the government and the public into action.

Mr Keenan said Ireland has to make choices. Having government strategies and national programmes for children was ineffective, he said, if the funding was not available and children's issues were put on the back burner.

Barnardos' programmes, he said, are currently assisting parents with large families, lone mothers, families with disabled children or inadequate incomes and others with difficulties.

"Poverty isn't the lack of a daily income, although that is critical and hurts on a daily basis," Mr Keenan said. "What hurts in the long term is the limits to children realising their full potential and that is what we want attention focused on."

Many parents caught in the poverty trap, he suggested, were performing heroically.

"It's too easy to put the responsibility on the individual child or family but as parents all of us experience stress and all of us could do with support in some stage of parenting."

He added: "We find parents go without to give the children the best they can give but too often, that's not enough."