Rabbitte: 60,000 children live in poverty

SIXTY-THOUSAND Irish children live in consistent poverty, Labour leader Pat Rabbitte told the Dáil yesterday.

Citing a report by the End Child Poverty Coalition, he said child poverty rates here were among the highest in Europe.

The Government target of eliminating child poverty by 2007 had “no realistic prospect of being achieved”. In fact, he said, inequality was actually widening.

He demanded to know how Taoiseach Bertie Ahern could justify “such private affluence living cheek by jowl with public squalor”.

He also called on Mr Ahern to agree to the Labour Party proposal of committing 5% of the next National Development Plan — or roughly €3.5 billion — to the country’s most deprived areas.

In response, Mr Ahern cited UN figures that showed 250,000 Irish people, including 100,000 children, had been lifted out of consistent poverty in recent years.

“We continue under the national anti-poverty strategy to put resources in place. Social welfare expenditure has doubled in the last six years. Improvement in social welfare rates have led to substantial increased spending on families: one in every three euro spent in the State goes on welfare. Every week one million people receive welfare payments, helping them all to one extent or another.”

He agreed the Government had to continue providing resources to tackle the problem. “We must remove the causes, reduce pupil-teacher ratios and continue renovating accommodation or building more desirable and family-friendly homes. All of these issues are massively costly but we are doing them.”

But he added: “If Deputy Rabbitte is asking how do we equalise wealth so everyone is equally wealthy, I do not have a ready solution and it is no good trying to answer that question.”

But Mr Rabbitte said he had never raised a question about everyone being “equally wealthy”.

“How can (the Taoiseach) use such a term when we are talking about 60,000 children living in poverty, about thousands of children going to school who would not have a meal in the morning if it were not for breakfast clubs, about areas I do not need to name where we can physically see the different strands of deprivation concentrated together?” he asked.

Referring to previous comments by Tánaiste Michael McDowell, Mr Rabbitte said some Government members believed inequality was necessary to drive society.

Labour did not believe that, he stressed.

“Tackling inequality ought to be a political priority now in a country of our prosperity.”