Taoiseach puzzled by lack of progress on poverty

The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, has said he wonders why we are not making a better job of dealing with the State's poverty.

Writing in To Act Justly, a book launched by the Saint Vincent de Paul Society in Dublin yesterday, he said "since the State was founded, one of its main objectives has been the relief of poverty and the equalisation of opportunity for all our people.

"As we approach the new millennium, with national macroeconomic indicators more positive than I have ever seen in my lifetime, we must ask why we are not making a better fist of it . . "

He said research had indicated it was not simply an issue of the level of resources being made available. Rather, it was the way in which those resources were deployed and co-ordinated, and the extent of community participation in the delivery of services.

"We urgently need much closer working relationships between the statutory agencies themselves, based on the clear priority of the real need of the communities in which they are working." Each community must be a full participant in the design, planning, delivery and evaluation of services.

He quoted from James Larkin: "At an early age I took my mind to this question of the ages - why are the many poor?" and referred to 1996 statistics which showed that 56 per cent of the Mountjoy Prison population came from six deprived Dublin communities.

"It is evident that a large proportion of crime has socio-economic roots" and where the most deprived communities were concerned conditions appeared to be growing worse.

The book's editor, Mr Michael Casey, said recent policy seemed more directed at "comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted" rather than the other way around.

Another speaker, Father Peter McVerry, said while the State had the highest economic growth in the EU, it also has the second highest level of child poverty. "We have Budget surpluses each year of over £1 billion yet children sleep on the streets because there are no places for them to go."

He wondered what has happened to us as a people. "We have lost our sense of outrage."