The two Irelands - Poverty a blight on our prosperity

The diversity between the rich and poor gets wider by the day in this country as expectations from the SSIA scheme lead many consumers to ignore persistent amber lights that are being flashed along the economic highway.

It is not being pessimistic to note that among the upbeat noises being generated by the prospect of such wealth as much as €16 billion there are also voices exhorting the exercise of caution.

Almost forgotten behind euro signs is the dichotomy which allows consistent poverty exist alongside prodigious, burgeoning affluence as illustrated by two reports published yesterday.

A survey by IIB Bank and the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) said that Irish consumers were expecting house prices to continue rising steadily in the next five years. The two groups said that 80% of respondents to the survey expected prices to continue rising by an average of 6% in the coming years. Of those surveyed, 14% said they expected prices to fall in the same period. Yet, the survey showed that SSIAs may boost house prices by 10%, inflating them by 5% more than if the scheme did not exist.

Quite obviously, most consumers are not fazed by the inevitability of higher interest rates, nor by reasoned warnings that the good days are not going to last forever. Very simply, they cannot.

For too many people the good times never arrived and they are still among the 10% of the population who still live in consistent poverty, which the ESRI show in another report.

Combat Poverty agency estimates that 150,000 children nationwide live in consistent poverty, an unconscionable scandal in the land of plenty, one that is persistently promoted by the Government as a super-rich economy and one to be emulated.

Just last weekend Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, at the IMI National Management Conference, used hindsight to add his own fuel to the economic fire. He said the predictions of a downturn last year "were entirely wrong", and those predictions led some people to "mistakenly" hold off buying property.

He used his crystal ball to suggest that the future, through a new National Development Plan from the Government, would settle all the country's ills be they infrastructure, environmental services, housing, education, health and childcare.

He painted a picture, subjective though it was, of a country where the roseate hue would endure and flourish around our economy. There was, obviously, no reference to the national emergency in A&E units around the country, now acknowledged by the Government. Neither was there any mention of consistent poverty, which is a blot on the positive image of one of the wealthiest countries in Europe.

A report from the Ulster Bank, relating to the construction industry, may well have struck an unintended ironic note, or possibly it was not unintended.

The bank said it looked like the Government spending agencies had finally got their act together and 2006 could well be the first year in a while to see no underspends in either current or capital spending.

The fact is that it does not require one to be a financial wizard to predict that the Government will ensure no "underspends" within months of a General Election.