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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 12 Oct 1995

Vol. 456 No. 8

Adjournment Debate. - EU Poverty IV Programme.

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for giving me the opportunity to again raise this matter on the Adjournment. However, this gives me no pleasure as I have been encouraging the Minister for Social Welfare since the beginning of the year to use his influence to convince his colleagues in the Council of Ministers that the Poverty IV programme should proceed. Regrettably he has failed to do this.

I understand that the German and UK Ministers have entered a reservation on this matter. During Question Time recently the Minister said he had met the Spanish delegation. It is beyond me why he should have spoken to them when it is the UK and German delegations which are causing the difficulties. In reply to a parliamentary question from me yesterday about whether any bilateral meetings had been arranged with the German and UK Minister it was clearly stated that no such meetings had taken place.

The task of a Minister in Europe is to convince his colleagues on certain matters and I am sad that the Minister has not achieved this, with the result that this programme has not been proceeded with almost a year later. If the Commissioner for Social Affairs had not put forward a proposal regarding an annual programme nothing would be done for those who are socially excluded. The Council of Ministers are putting the Poverty IV programme on the long finger by keeping it on the agenda and saying it will be considered. However, this is no use to the people who will benefit from it. I call on the Minister to immediately seek bilateral meetings with the UK and German Ministers and to ask them to lift their reservation so that a reasonable compromise can be arrived at.

I welcome Deputy Walsh to the House. This is the third occasion he has put down this matter. On the two previous occasions he subsequently withdrew the matter for some reason or other. Maybe the train to Cork is more important to him than the issue of poverty.

The Deputy asked why I met my Spanish colleague on this issue. I did so because I am the President of the Council and if one wishes to influence the Council in terms of what is on the agenda one must talk to the President. In regard to Poverty III, the projects covered under this programme are being funded by my Department. There is, therefore, no loss to the projects under this programme even though Poverty IV is not in place. Poverty IV is a new programme and it will have nothing to do with the projects covered under Poverty III.

I am glad Deputy Walsh raised this issue as it gives me an opportunity to make a report to the House. I had expected to have been making a report last week, or that the Minister of State, Deputy Durkan, would have been making it on my behalf on Thursday, following the Council meeting I attended in Luxembourg. Because Deputy Joe Walsh withdrew his question last week and again this week I had arranged for one of my colleagues to table the question today but Deputy Walsh re-tabled it and I am pleased that he is here to hear my reply.

The medium-term pilot programme to combat economic and social exclusion and promote solidarity was conceived to support and stimulate innovative measures geared at combating social exclusion over the period 1994-95. As anybody with an interest in anti-poverty issues knows, this programme has been stalled in the Council since having been proposed by the Commission and first discussed in April 1994. The Commission proposal sought to double the £44 million expenditure on the third poverty programme which had supported some 40 projects. It is not clear from where Deputy Joe Walsh plucked his figure of £10 million but no doubt he can elaborate.

The background to the proposal is that the three successive poverty programmes to date have been the only European Union programmes with poverty and social exclusion as their specific focus. As a result of the success of those programmes the concept of social exclusion found its way into the other European Union programmes and has been incorporated in the mainstream to the extent it has in our domestic policy-making.

While Deputy Walsh has been rattling his begging bowl, I have sought to make the point in Europe that there is every objective justification for a new programme, drawing on the results of its predecessors, reflecting the diversity of national approaches, drawing lessons from the range of anti-poverty and anti-exclusion measures being developed in various member states.

Nothing has been left undone that could reasonably have been done by the Government to progress this issue. Over the past year I have been to the forefront in pressing for agreement on a new poverty programme. My Department has recently appointed a permanent representative to the Irish delegation in Brussels to enhance our capacity to impact on the social affairs brief at European level. I made a forceful intervention at the Social Affairs Council in June last, at which meeting most other member states rowed in behind the Irish Government, but we were unable to change the stance of the German Government. Prior to the Council meeting last week, I met my Spanish counterpart, the President of the Council, to ascertain whether anything further could be done to progress this issue.

At the Social Affairs Council in Luxembourg last week the issue was on the agenda again. However, real difficulties remain. The central fact is that the proposed programme has been blocked by the German Government for reasons which dispute the legal basis on which the Commission has put forward the proposal. Subsequent to the initial decision of the German Government to veto this programme, the United Kingdom Government also associated itself with this position. While there is a genuine point of principle at issue, it is also likely there is an element of economic pragmatism in the stances of both countries.

The principle at issue is a very serious one whose potential repercussions go much wider than the social exclusion programme itself. The principle involved contests the right of the Commission to propose certain programmes under Article 235, ostensibly on the basis that the principle of subsidiarity applies and that certain programmes are best handled at national or subnational level. If that principle were applied consistently, the fourth Community programme on equal opportunities, for instance, could also be stalled.

However, I hope and believe that realism and a sense of purpose will reassert themselves. Otherwise, as far as the Commission and Union are concerned, we could be in for a sustained period of marking time in the development of a broader social policy agenda within the European Union and in the elaboration of social measures to complement economic and monetary ones.

Deputy Walsh should be aware that one of the fundamental reasons this programme was stalled is precisely the paucity of Articles in the Maastricht Treaty dealing specifically with aspects of social cohesion. The Government which negotiated that treaty and left no stone unturned to have it passed by the Irish people included himself as a junior Minister.

There is no point in merely lamenting the current impasse on the social exclusion proposal or in baying for an imaginary £10 million. The challenge to us is to endeavour to come up with a compromise which could disentangle the issue of principle involved from merely tactical considerations.

With that purpose in mind I put forward a compromise proposal at last week's Council meeting in Luxembourg. I suggested that the Commission might invite the recently established High Level Committee on Social Exclusion, comprising senior officials and representatives of each member state, to draw up a proposal, in co-operation with the Commission, which would reflect the concerns of those delegations who had had difficulties with the draft poverty IV programme yet still move the debate forward. This new proposal would take account of expenditure financed through other European Union programmes on social exclusion and seek to define the remit of a specific programme on social exclusion.

In the ensuing debate I made the point strongly that the European Union cannot adopt very stringent and detailed policies on economic and monetary union and walk away from their casualties. My proposal gained the support of certain Scandinavian and a number of other European countries.

In accordance with the Treaties the present initiative to progress the matter rests, once again, with the Commission who I understand intend calling an early meeting of the high level committee I proposed. I and the Government will do our utmost to try to bring about movement on this issue. If Fianna Fáil is really concerned, it should get its MEPs to raise the issue in the European Parliament, through the appropriate committees, rather than standing on the side lines issuing statements condemning me.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that the standstill at European Union level on poverty and social exclusion issues is totally at variance with the commitments of member states at the World Summit for Social Development held in Copenhagen earlier this year, to work toward the elimination of poverty.

I remain convinced that it takes a specific European Union programme to give continued insights into structural poverty and to find ongoing solutions to the fight against social exclusion.

In the context of preparing for our Presidency of the European Union next year, I intend to discuss items of major interest and concern with the Commissioner for Social Affairs and the Chair of the European Parliament's Committee on Social Affairs in the near future. Deputy Walsh can be assured I will avail of both occasions to try to progress implementation of the social exclusion programme. I will keep the House and the Select Committee on Social Affairs informed of any progress made.

The meeting led to the establishment by the Commission in June last of the High Level Committee on Social Exclusion to examine new ways of tackling that problem. At that meeting the Commission also unveiled plans to spend five million ECUs on pilot projects to combat social exclusion in 1995. I am aware that many Irish groups have applied for projects to be funded. The moneys nominated by the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council for expenditure on the programme to tackle social exclusion are being spent this year.

It was suggested in newspapers that Deputy Joe Walsh was upset at my abruptly leaving the House on Wednesday last, as he claimed. I might point out that I left the House, having dealt with questions nominated for priority, to travel to Luxembourg to deal with this very issue. If my leaving offended him in any way, it was not intended, nor was it intended to be discourteous to the House. Having explained to the Deputy I was going to Luxembourg to deal with this important issue, I thought he would have understood that to be my reason for leaving.

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