Call to promote social agenda in EU

Ireland must use its presidency of the European Union next year to ensure the economic and social agendas are "re-balanced", a conference on Ireland's role in Europe was told yesterday.

Father Sean Healy, justice spokesman with the Conference Of Religious in Ireland (CORI), said that while the emphasis in the EU to date had been on economic progress, European development required "that the social dimension be given greater priority".

"Otherwise the European project will continue to lose support among the people of Europe."

He described as "a major disappointment for us", the failure of the Convention on the Future of Europe to identify "the elimination and prevention of poverty as an objective of the Union in its draft EU Constitution".

This failure, he said, "does not augur well for the future of Europe's most excluded people".

"It also runs counter to the revision of the Council of Europe's European Social Charter in 1996 which recognised new rights including the right of protection against poverty."

Delivering a paper he co-wrote with Sister Brigid Reynolds, Father Healy went on to urge the adoption of a rights-based approach in addressing social, economic and cultural issues. The basic rights every European citizen should have were sufficient income to live life with dignity, meaningful work, appropriate accommodation, relevant education, basic healthcare and cultural respect, he said.

Mr David Begg, general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, said the tax base must be broadened if "the increasing problem of inequality and social marginalisation" is to be tackled. "It is to European values that I look when seeking to promote the type of Ireland I want to see."

He said that while the low tax base had given us one of the highest economic growth rates in the world, "we have probably overshot the target at this stage".

The overall level of tax revenue was not adequate to finance public services and economic growth had put "huge pressure on housing and other forms of economic and social infrastructure", he said.

Dr Patricia O'Hara, senior policy analyst with the Western Development Commission, said that although Ireland had been a major beneficiary of EU regional funds, the Structural Funds programmes had had little impact in reducing regional divergences within Ireland.