Poverty agency has ‘regrets’ on integration

THE Combat Poverty Agency (CPA) has unveiled its final annual report before it is subsumed into a government department, with its chairman admitting there was “uncertainty” over the move.

It was announced at last October’s budget that the CPA would be integrated alongside the Office for Social Inclusion into a new division in the Department of Social and Family Affairs, ending 23 years as in independent statutory body.

Launching its last annual report yesterday, CPA chairman Brian Duncan said: “It is still my view that I have some regrets. There are some downsides to what is happening.”

He said the CPA had forged a reputation for “telling it as we see it” and that function would now be lost.

However, he said the staff at the CPA would now be closer to the policymakers, and while this would present some challenges, “on balance, I think this can work well”.

He also stressed the need for a new advisory structure to be put in place to help ease the transition and ensure that certain policies and initiatives already under way are allowed to continue.

“The minister (Mary Hanafin) has said all the right things – it will be interesting to see what structures she actually puts in place,” he said.

CPA team leader Jim Walsh said last year was when “we saw the first turnings of the economy and the emerging of new poverty risks in Irish society”.

He said care needed to be taken to monitor the social problems that are likely to arise in future because of the recession, and that the Government should not “lose sight of poverty” while it focuses on resuscitating the banking sector.

Commenting on the publication of CPA’s last annual report, Fine Gael social and family affairs spokeswoman Olwyn Enright said Combat Poverty had done “sterling work since its foundation”.

“Combat Poverty was one of the few effective agencies which should have been preserved, because it was not afraid to challenge Fianna Fáil about its failure to tackle social exclusion,” she said.

“This really was a case of closure by stealth, with Minister Mary Hanafin bolting new laws to close down Combat Poverty onto a social welfare bill while it was still being debated in the Dáil.”

The CPA will officially integrate with the Department of Social and Family Affairs at the end of this month.