Greens expect Cabinet row over poverty reduction plan

State must look at base rate of social welfare and a raft of other changes to reduce consistent poverty to 2%, says minister

Joe O'Brien is expected to tell the Oireachtas committee on social protection that the Government must make good on its aim to drive down the consistent poverty rate to the lowest it has ever been.  File Picture

A government minister says the State must look at the base rate of social welfare and a raft of other changes to reduce consistent poverty to 2%.

Joe O'Brien, Minister of State at the Department of Rural and Community Development, is expected to tell the Oireachtas committee on social protection tomorrow that the Government must make good on its programme for government commitment, which aims to drive down the consistent poverty rate to the lowest it has ever been. 

The consistent poverty rate in Ireland fell from 7% in 2005 to 4.2% by 2008 before rising to 9% in 2013. 

Over the following five years, the rate fell to 5.6% in 2018. In 2019, it was 5.5% and is expected to be higher this year due to Covid19.

The Government's paper: A Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025, prepared by the last Fine Gael government, notes a target of reducing the number of children in consistent poverty by 70,000 from its 2011 level.

Mr O'Brien told the Irish Examiner: "In my view, this Government needs to do something no other government has done before, the issue won't go away unless there's a focused commitment.

"There are three groups which have substantially higher rates of consistent poverty on average; children, people with disabilities, and lone parents, if we can make solid differences to those groups, I think we can have a real crack off it.

"We need to be proactive, we can't wait for data to tell us what happened in 2020, ultimately we need to look at payment rates for those three groups, for instance, the base rate [for jobseeker’s benefit] hasn't gone up in years at €203 per week.

"In 2019 the 'at risk of poverty' threshold was €276 per week.

"The base rate needs to be looked at and the ongoing issue that we measure poverty relative to average wages here, we don't link payment rates to average wages.

"When things got bad previously, welfare rates would be cut, but if they're benchmarked and tied to average wages, there would be a cut-off for how low they could be cut."

Along with income, access to housing, education and healthcare all have huge implications for those living in or at risk of slipping into poverty.

Mr O'Brien added that although good work had been done on childcare in the Government's latest budget, more could be done in order to tackle costs for families and incentivise returning to the workforce for those who want to.

"Government will have to commit resources in a way that hasn't been done before and we'll all benefit from it if we do, poverty doesn't just affect the people who suffer from it, society suffers — it's a no-brainer."

Sources within the Government say they are prepared for push back at cabinet level over the plan, likely from Fine Gael ministers including Social Protection Minister Heather Humphries.

The expectation is that departments such as finance and public expenditure will push back on the hugely ambitious plans due to the unprecedented economic situation created by Covid-19.

Ireland's definition of consistent poverty was developed independently by the Economic and Social Research Institute and identifies the proportion of people, from those with an income below a certain threshold (less than 60% of median income), who are deprived of two or more goods or services considered essential for a basic standard of living, such as strong shoes, or a warm coat.

The target set in the Revised National Anti Poverty Strategy (2002) was to reduce the numbers of those who are consistently poor to 2.0% by 2007, however, the Government has consistently failed to meet this target.