Agreed. I move amendment No. 2:
In page 4, subsection (1) (a), line 13, to delete "the Minister" and substitute "the Government".
Section 4 (1) (a) would then state:
(1) The Agency shall have the following general functions—
(a) advising and making recommendations to the Government on all aspects of economic and social planning in relation to poverty in the State;
I put down this amendment because I consider that poverty is not simply a matter of social welfare payments or schemes, nor should it be the sole responsibility of the Minister for Social Welfare. There is no doubt that without our social welfare system the poverty in our society would be far greater. In many cases, however, the social welfare payments received by people leave them very much in the poverty trap. The poverty trap often prevents people from getting out of the category of social welfare recipients.
I have proposed that the agency should report to the Government rather than the Minister because it is the responsibility of the Government to deal with the question of poverty rather than the responsibility of any single Minister. Poverty is emphasised and in many cases created in areas of life other than social welfare. There are the areas of education, law, housing, the environment in which people live and which are the responsibility of Ministers other than the Minister for Social Welfare. In the area of health, as has been shown by many surveys, the poorer one is the worse one's health is likely to be, and the worse also is the health service one is likely to get. All of these areas are important to people in poverty.
This agency should be reporting directly to the Government, if for no other reason than to indicate that it is a much wider problem. If the agency report simply to the Minister for Social Welfare, I have no doubt that a lot of the work done by the agency will be filtered by the Department, and in many cases other Departments may not accept the responsibility to act on recommendations made by the agency. Other Ministers in Government might also see it as purely a social welfare problem. That is basically the reason I am pressing that the agency should report directly to the Government rather than to the Minister for Social Welfare.
Before I finish let me say that I regard this method of dealing with poverty as largely window dressing. I do not see how this agency, under this Government or under a Fianna Fáil Government, can tackle the problems of poverty, because poverty is not simply a state into which people choose to go. There is little doubt that a very high percentage of poverty at the moment is the result of unemployment. Unemployment does not occur simply out of the blue. It arises from the pursuit of particular social and economic policies by Governments, and by the Governments which we have had in this State for the past 60 years who have pursued a particular approach in relation to our economy and the development of our resources.
I do not see an agency like this doing other than researching the causes of poverty, producing reports and making recommendations and, perhaps, in some circumstances, providing an opportunity for some of the poor themselves to actually get involved in trying to tackle their own problems. Fundamentally poverty can only be tackled by the Government implementing wide-ranging economic policies which, as far as I am concerned, would have to be socialist policies. Clearly the private enterprise policies which have been pursued and continue to be pursued and promoted have failed and continue to fail. It has been seen for generations that that kind of approach has always left the poor in our society. There is no likelihood that this agency will overcome that problem.
Another section of the Bill seeks to have plans produced and laid before the Minister every three years. There is another section which states that this agency will be never ending. That is, in fact, the case. Unless we change the whole social structure of this society of ours, this agency will continue in existence and will always have to deal with poverty because poverty is endemic to the kind of economic system we have. While I am arguing these amendments which will hopefully make this Bill a bit more effective, the agency certainly will not cure poverty in our society.