Fairer Ireland report - Reforms toend poverty lack resolve

IN its socio-economic review, Developing a Fairer Ireland, published today, CORI Justice calls on the Government to recognise the glaring inequities in our system, which are being accepted as a virtual aspect of our current prosperity.

This country is now regarded as rich, with major advances in the area of employment, but there are also growing levels of poverty.

The wide disparity in income distributions should not be overlooked, nor the high levels of illiteracy and early school leaving. A total of 22.6% of the Irish population are identified as functionally illiterate in that they are unable to read a newspaper. This is intolerable.

The proportion of the population categorised at risk of poverty is currently 19.8%, compared with 15.6% in 1994, but in fairness it should be noted that the figure for 2001 was 21.9%, so there has been a recent improvement in this area.

As the report rightly points out, there is an extensive list of potential reforms that any government could tackle, and no country can do all that it might wish.

It is therefore necessary to prioritise reforms and a society should be measured by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. By this standard, we clearly have lots of work to do.