Willie O'Dea
Question:3. Deputy Willie O'Dea asked the Minister for Social Protection his plans to tackle poverty in view of the anti-poverty targets that have been missed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18819/16]
View answerThursday, 30 June 2016
Questions (3)
Oral answers (6 contributions)
This question was prompted by a recent report from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul that it is getting in excess of 2,300 calls per week from families in need. What are the current levels of consistent poverty and otherwise? Where does the Minister intend to focus in his budget to start making inroads into those?
Tackling poverty continues to be a priority for the Government. The updated national action plan for social inclusion identifies a wide range of targeted actions and interventions to achieve the overall objective of reducing poverty. The goals include a focus on early childhood development, youth exclusion, access to the labour market, migrant integration, social housing and affordable energy. The national social target, set in 2010, is to reduce consistent poverty to 4% by 2016 and to 2% or less by 2020. The target is to lift over 70,000 children out of consistent poverty by 2020. Ireland’s contribution to the Europe 2020 poverty target is to lift a minimum of 200,000 people out of combined poverty, namely, at-risk-of-poverty and-or basic deprivation, by 2020.
These targets are now more challenging than when they were set because poverty rates rose substantially during the recession from 2009 to 2013. However, the CSO survey on income and living conditions, SILC, shows that for the first time since the crisis, poverty levels stabilised in 2014. Consistent poverty decreased marginally to 8% while consistent poverty among children was 11.2%. We expect those positive trends will have continued in 2015.
The full impact of the recovery is not yet reflected in these 2014 figures. Ireland has returned to strong economic and employment growth. The unemployment rate in May 2016 was 7.8%, down from a peak of 15% in 2012. As unemployment is strongly linked to poverty, we can expect further decreases in poverty as the figures for 2015 and 2016 become available. It is envisaged that 2015 data will be released in November next.
Social transfers play a crucial role in alleviating poverty and inequality. In 2014, social transfers, excluding pensions, reduced the at-risk-of-poverty rate from 37.2% to 15.6%, thereby lifting over a fifth of the population out of income poverty.
Ireland is the best performing EU member state in reducing poverty through social transfers. Continued economic recovery, together with Government action to sustain and develop the social welfare system, will support further reductions in poverty over the coming years.
The latest figures available to us indicate that consistent poverty among the population at large is still 8%, among children it is 11.2%, which is more than one in ten, and among lone parents it is 22.1%, which is more than one in five. With regard to levels of deprivation, on the other hand, whereby people do not have all they need to live a decent, humane lifestyle, as measured internationally, the deprivation rate among the general population is 29% and among lone parents it is a staggering 59%, which means almost six out of every ten lone parents are experiencing deprivation. What does the Minister intend to focus on in the budget to begin making inroads into those figures, which I am sure he will agree are outrageous in a developed country?
It is an absolute priority to improve those figures and to improve the lives of people in the coming years. As the Deputy said, consistent poverty stood at 8% in 2014. It is worth noting that in 2005, during the boom, it was 7%, so it is only 1% higher now than it was at a particular point in boom.
This is not just about cash transfers. I attended a very good conference on child poverty last week, organised by the Children's Rights Alliance. All of the NGOs and groups there were of the same opinion, namely, when it comes to cash transfers such as child benefit and benefit payments, Ireland actually has among the highest payments in the EU. Where we fall down badly is on services, such as child care, and because people on low incomes have to pay to see their doctor, when they do not have to do so in other countries. I will, of course, be looking for measures in the budget that increase income supports targeted at those who need them the most, but the real focus has to be on improving services and also on getting people into work. No welfare payment can compete with a well-paid job. We need more people in work and we need to focus particularly on services. An extra €5 a month in child benefit costs €60 million but €60 million invested in speech and language or early intervention in child care goes so much further when it comes to the alleviation of poverty.
I do not disagree with that. The Minister stated in his reply that the Government target is to reduce consistent poverty to 2% by 2020. Back in 2014 the Government set a target for reducing consistent poverty, which was then at 8%, to 4% by 2016. However, it is still at 8%, so the figure has not moved at all. In addition, a target was set in 2014 to take 70,000 children out of consistent poverty by 2020. I am now reliably informed that the number of children who will have to be taken out of consistent poverty by 2020 to enable the Government to meet that target is 97,000 because, again, the figure has not moved at all. Is the Minister confident he will realise his ambition to take 97,000 children out of consistent poverty by 2020 and that he will get the rate of consistent poverty down from 8% to 2% by 2020, in view of the fact it has not moved at all since the target was originally set in 2014?
The figure was 8% for 2014 and, as we will not have the figure for 2016 until the end of 2017, we will not know how much lower it is than 8% until then. These will be difficult targets to meet and understanding them is a science in itself. Interestingly, the reason the number of children we have to take out of poverty has gone up from 70,000 to 97,000 is not because living conditions for children have fallen in that period but because of the rise in median incomes. For example, if the pension for pensioners is increased but nothing is done for children, child poverty increases because of the relativities involved. If, for example, we restored pay for young teachers, nurses and gardaí, most of whom do not have children in poverty, that actually increases the child poverty figure. What we do not want to do is meet the targets by suppressing people's incomes; we want to reach them by improving people's living conditions. That is why the focus has to be on services.