Budget creates ‘a poverty trap’ for children in poor families

FINANCE Minister Brian Lenihan has opened a poverty trapdoor for poor children by introducing a series of damaging tax and welfare system changes for young families across the country, a leading group has warned.

The Children’s Rights Alliance (CRA), which acts as an umbrella group for over 90 non-governmental organisations for children’s rights in Ireland, was hitting out at the supplementary budget. It said despite some positive measures, the budget had potentially damaged the future of a generation of children.

According to the group’s budget analysis, released yesterday, Mr Lenihan’s decision to bring families on the minimum wage into the tax net means a parent on the poverty line will now be forced to pay e7 a week or e28 a month to the State. And warning that the move will create a “poverty trap for poor working families” who are now faced with the reality that “it makes more financial sense for parents to claim the dole than go to work”, the CRA said an increase in child poverty is inevitable.

In addition to the tax rises, the children’s rights group has raised concerns over the impact of the tightened rules for the child benefit payment scheme, to be imposed next year, and has criticised the delay in the Children’s Referendum as an attempt to save the State further resources at the expense of vulnerable children.

“The small print of the budget shows the e40 million allocated to hold a referendum to strengthen children’s rights in the Constitution in 2009 has been removed from this year’s budget estimates,” reads the group’s budget analysis report. “The CRA is deeply disappointed by the lack of transparency on this issue... and by the lack of progress in introducing this important reform for children’s rights.”

The CRA was established in 1995 in an attempt to improve the lives of all children and young people in Ireland under the age of 18 through necessary legal, policy and service changes.

As a result of the budget cutbacks, the group has claimed this ambitious goal continues to remain out of reach for families and children in need.