TDs angry over abolition of poverty agency

ANGRY TDs yesterday expressed concern over the abolition of the Combat Poverty Agency (CPA) and its merger within a government department as it was revealed that 40% of the agency’s staff have been lost.

It emerged at a heated discussion at an Oireachtas committee that the new division into which the agency has been subsumed will also play no advocacy role in the fight against poverty.

Committee members called for an overhaul of the new division’s plans torespond to the urgent matter of people going hungry and losing their homes amid the economic crisis. The CPA was formally abolished on July 1 and merged with the Office for Social Inclusion into a new division within the Department of Social and Family Affairs.