Denying our children a better future

DEPRESSING images of child poverty in Ireland will soon become a reality for the world to see as Barnardos, the country’s leading charity in this field, launches a website to heighten awareness of a grim scenario where young lives are blighted by alcohol, drug abuse and violence.

They are the forgotten children whose families never heard the soft purr of the Celtic Tiger economy. Rather they heard its harsh growl and continue to experience poverty to such an extent that many children go to school hungry.

Graphically illustrating the yawning gulf between the haves and have-nots in our society, the political implication of the website initiative is that the Coalition has failed miserably to reach out and touch the lives of children in need.

To our shame, Ireland boasts the second highest level of child poverty in the EU next to Britain.

According to UNICEF, the proportion of children living below the poverty line in the Republic is more than twice that of the Netherlands and France and more than six times the level in some Scandinavian countries.

Last year Barnardos worked with over 12,000 children and parents across the country and the organisation

estimates that 90,000 children live in consistent poverty.

As emphasised by chief executive Owen Keegan, grinding poverty is not merely the lack of daily income but a long-term affliction that sets limits on a child’s hope of ever achieving his or her potential.

In a welcome move, the organisation is putting the facts up on the net as an integral part of a multi-faceted campaign aimed at highlighting the ongoing trauma of child poverty.

Hopefully, this will lead to informed and robust

debate about the proportion of children affected by poverty and particularly the failure of Government

policies to bring about any significant improvement in their lives.

From working with a wide range of communities, Barnardos are well placed to portray poverty as it affects the day-to-day lives of children who regularly go to school without adequate food or clothing and without any hope of getting special education supports such as speech therapy.

It is all too easy to demonise parents who may well be doing their best but who are usually fighting an uphill battle against poverty. All too often, when parents go without in order to give their children the best, it is not enough to help them climb out of the rut.

The steady increase in inequality in Ireland over the last 10 years, makes a mockery of the economic cliché that a rising tide lifts all boats. Clearly, it does not.

As underlined by Barnardos, too many children are still living in poverty in Ireland, unprotected from danger and risk, homeless and without access to childcare. Their rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are not being met.

If they were counted in demographic terms, the number of children living in consistent poverty in this county would equal the combined population of Galway, Killarney and Tralee.

In the wake of its last Budget, the Government was deservedly accused of having failed children, putting them last rather than first on its priority list.

Nothing that has transpired since changes that damning criticism. Those children deserve a better future than they are now being offered.