BACK PAGES:THE UNEMPLOYMENT rate in 1991 was in the region of 19 per cent and emigration was still a regular fact of Irish life. How to deal with Ireland's seemingly intractable economic problems was a matter of much debate, to which a report commissioned by the Combat Poverty Agency and summarised in this day's newspaper contributed.
Irish poverty rate ‘one of the worst in Europe’
Economic growth can do little to ease poverty and long-term unemployment and can even make the problem worse by allowing many within the community to fall further behind, according to a study on urban poverty in Ireland published yesterday by the Combat Poverty Agency.
The team of British and Irish experts which drew up the report was led by Prof David Donnison of Glasgow University, who said the rate of poverty in Ireland was one of the worst in Europe and was growing.
At the same time, Ireland was an economy that was moving in the right direction.
There was economic growth, inflation was under control and reform in areas such as taxation and local government was being debated. It was an example of how the rising tide will not lift all boats, he said.
Part of the problem was that Ireland’s economic growth was due to the activities of multinational companies, which were not labour-intensive, had few local links and tended to send profits abroad.
“Little of what they do filters through to the rest of the economy,” he pointed out.
Emigration also affected the long-term unemployed. “Every time there is an upturn in the economy, there are thousands working abroad willing to come home, leaving the long-term unemployed just where they are.”
Prof Donnison said there were optimistic signs. The Programme for Economic and Social Progress was a good start. “I wish we had something similar in Britain.”
The Irish Government had to designate some areas to be in need of special programmes and treatment, similar to the EC’s regional policy. There had to be massive changes in the attitude of the bureaucracy.
The system of means-testing, of housing policy, of education tended to exclude people and create ghettos of those with long-term problems.
The director of the agency, Mr Hugh Frazer, said there was a growing realisation that economic growth could not deal with urban poverty. Each new round of growth further excluded those on the margins. Before they were unemployed, they lived in communities where there were jobs.
Now, whole communities were without work. Their children could not find work, they had little money and so local services closed.
Wealth created by growth must be used to put in place integrated programmes. These should be aimed at bringing people back into the economy, so they could contribute to it rather than be a drain on it.
The Minister for Labour, Mr [Bertie] Ahern, who launched the report, said during the 1980s high concentration of unemployment in certain geographical areas had become more and more evident.
“Restructuring of many traditional industries was accompanied by widespread labour shedding in the surrounding areas, which often relied on one industry,” he said.
