Govt urged to stamp out poverty in 10 years

The Government was today challenged to wipe out poverty in a decade.

Leading anti-poverty campaigner Fr Sean Healy said the state should mark the 2010 European Year Against Poverty by adopting zero poverty as its target by 2020.

The Social Justice Ireland chief said last month’s Budget had placed the most vulnerable people in a worse-off position by cutting welfare rates.

“Government has claimed it had no choice in making the decisions it made. But this is not true,” Fr Healy said.

“Social Justice Ireland produced a detailed set of fully-costed proposals that showed how government could have achieved the adjustments of €4bn it sought in Budget 2010 without reducing social welfare rates and without cutting the funding for organisations and programmes addressing poverty and social exclusion.”

Before the Budget, Social Justice demanded the state get rid of tax breaks and protect social welfare.

Fr Healy estimates there are 615,000 people at risk of poverty in Ireland, including almost 200,000 children, while 116,000 are unemployed and classed as the working poor.

Social Justice Ireland said the Government has forgotten the lessons learned in recent years and reversed the strategies that had been reducing poverty, such as increasing social welfare rates.

The body claims poverty levels dropped from 19.7% in 2003 to a record low of 13.9% in 2008.

“This approach was supplemented by a wide range of initiatives aimed at mobilising local communities to tackle poverty effectively in their local areas,” Fr Healy said.

“Budget 2010 reversed this approach; it reduced welfare rates, by more than the fall in the cost of living for poor people, resulting in Ireland’s most vulnerable people being worse off in 2010 than in 2009.

“It also reduced the funding for addressing poverty and social exclusion at local level.”