Combat Poverty Agency wins FF TDs’ support

GOVERNMENT TDs have called on the Minister for Social Affairs to abandon a proposal to scrap the Combat Poverty Agency as a cost-cutting measure.

Fianna Fáil members of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social and Family Affairs yesterday joined with opposition deputies in unanimously passing a resolution urging Minister Mary Hanafin to save the body.

The 22-year-old agency’s future has been in doubt since a review carried out by the Office of Social Inclusion within the minister’s department recommended last month that it be subsumed into that office.