The poorest in society benefited slightly more from Budget 2003 than the highest-income households, according to expert analysis presented to an Oireachtas committee yesterday.
The Combat Poverty Agency showed that the bottom 40 per cent of households recorded a modest income gain of 0.5 per cent in last month's Budget. This compared to the top fifth of society's earners, who saw a loss in their relative position of some 0.7 per cent.
The head of research at the government-advisory body, Mr Jim Walsh, told members of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social and Family Affairs that the average overall change in income due to the Budget was a loss of 0.2 per cent.
This compared to previous budgets which had produced average gains of about 2 per cent.
Mr Walsh described the Budget as "mildly distributive", producing a very slight reduction in income poverty.
Like the previous budget, it focused on welfare expenditure over tax reductions, he said.
However, he also highlighted the "missed opportunity of the golden years," when an even budget distribution between welfare and tax measures would have led to an extra €1.5billion funding for welfare measures.
"If the pro-welfare focus in this Budget had been replicated in previous ones, we would have had much more income redistribution and a much better impact on poverty," he added.
The comparisons outlined by Mr Walsh were based on a tax-benefit model which analyses the distributive effect of budgets against the reference point of a "neutral benchmark," under which all groups would share equally in the benefits of economic growth.
He said the model, devised by the Economic and Social Research Institute, did not factor in indirect taxes and inflation which might offset the budget's gains.
The director of the agency, Ms Helen Johnston, said one-fifth of the population, or more than 800,000 people, fell below the "poverty line" of about €147 per week in 2000, an increase from 16 per cent in 1994.
The poverty line is defined as 60 per cent of average income. The increase in this "relative income poverty" compared to an ongoing decrease in "consistent poverty".
More than 200,000 people, or 6 per cent of the population, were living in consistent poverty in 2000, compared to 15 per cent in 1994, she said.
Consistent poverty is when a person has less than €173 per week and also lacks one of eight basic "deprivation items" such as one substantial meal a day or two pairs of strong shoes.
Ms Johnston said decreases in unemployment and improvements in social welfare, especially Child Benefit, had contributed to the decline of consistent poverty.
She said this decline, combined with the rise in income poverty, was partly due to the fact that, while incomes in the population generally grew at a very fast rate during the economic boom, the incomes of the poorest in society dependent on social welfare grew at a generally much smaller rate.
"Thus, to tackle income poverty, among other things, social welfare payments need to be linked to increases in wages," she added.
A Fine Gael TD, Mr Michael Ring, criticised the Budget's increase of €6 per week in basic social welfare payments which "would not allow you to buy a loaf of bread a day the way prices are going up," he said. People were "angry, annoyed, hurt and feeling the pinch".