Republican News · Thursday 9 January 1996

[An Phoblacht]

A poverty of ideas

 

Will new poverty studies lead to solutions?

 
Despite all the research and studies that have been concluded on poverty in Ireland over the past 10 years the real problem has been the absence of a political will or commitment to effectively tackle the issues that create poverty and deprivation.

A minimum income, an adequate social welfare payment, a poverty line - are these different sides of the same coin? In Ireland can you be poor if you don't fall into these categories? Are you not poor if you happen to earn one penny more than the Economic and Social Research Institute's (ESRI) £63 a week poverty line?

Three new studies on poverty in Ireland were published before Christmas. The studies came from the Combat Poverty Agency and the ESRI. Poverty in the 1990s was published jointly by the two bodies while the ESRI also published a review of the 1985 Commission on Social Welfare. The third report on Poverty in Rural Ireland was published by Combat Poverty.

Newspaper articles were commissioned, press conferences were held and now in January the poor of Ireland are still poor and still suffering. Why? Because despite all the research and studies that have been concluded on poverty in Ireland over the past 10 years the real problem has been the absence of a political will or commitment to effectively tackle the issues that create poverty and deprivation.

This bleak backdrop seems to have little effect on many of those who work in what is now an academic poverty industry. There are many researchers and writers who are deeply concerned about finding the most effective ways of tackling poverty in Ireland. The fact that cannot be ignored though is that they are actively hampered by not only governments who ignore their findings but by unending methodological debates over what is or isn't an adequate level of social welfare payment.

Crucial Information

The reports by Combat Poverty, especially the one on rural poverty, provide crucial information for tackling deprivation. For example it shows clearly the effects of partition on the Irish economy. The isolated North West and Border Regions are the most deprived in the state. The study also shows clearly the extent of underdevelopment in the west of Ireland, particularly along the western seaboard.

Last December's ESRI review of the 1985 Commission on Social Welfare - despite raising hopes of clearing the academic fog about what is an adequate social welfare payment - ultimately disappoints and now faces the possibility of falling into the same trap as the 1985 Commission.

In the early 1980s a Commission on Social Welfare was convened by the then Labour/Fine Gael coalition. The Commission engaged in an extensive study seeking public submissions. Its 530 page report was heralded as a ground-breaking study on not only the 26-County social welfare system but also its future development.

Over time though two things happened. The report became remembered only for its recommendations on what should be the minimum social welfare payment. It picked a figure in 1985 of between £50 to £60 a week.

Welfare Soundbites

The report was then reduced to a soundbite as successive Leinster House politicians trotted out the obligatory `we are only implementing the recommendations of the Commission on Social Welfare' even though a £60 weekly welfare payment only became a reality in the 1990s more than five years after the Commission's original report.

So how did the original Commission come up with their £50 to £60 a week figure? The authors outlined a range of ways. The first involved costing a ``minimally adequate diet''. They then decided that the average Irish household spent one third of its weekly budget on food. So they multiplied the cost of a minimum adequate diet by three giving a 1985 welfare payment of £54.36.

A second method considered was to estimate the costs of maintaining an adult in a state institution. The only data available was for prisons and the figures estimated using this method were between £51 and £56 a week. Whether the Commission thought that prison life is a minimum adequate standard of living is not made clear by the authors.

Arbitrary Methods

These methods were rejected in the 1996 ESRI study and instead they concentrate on the other procedures which involved looking at average earnings and dividing by two giving a net figure of £58 a week. The Commission report's authors admitted in 1985 that other methods of dividing average earnings by two would have given a possible figure of £90. What percentage you chose of average income though is entirely arbitrary.

The net result of all these deliberations was that the Commission picked the lower figure and it became a mantra for politicians from then on.

The 1996 report by the ESRI which was commissioned by the Dublin Government cites clearly the inadequacies of all of the measures used in 1985. It does however reprocess the calculations using 1994 figures and comes up with a minimum adequate weekly income for a single adult as being between £75 and £96. The current single persons social welfare payment is £64.50.

The question is whether the poor in the 26 Counties have been condemned to another ten years of deprivation while politicians point to a meaningless line in the sand. Judging by the leaks on the forthcoming budget it seems as though another ten year cycle has already begun.

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