AS WRITTEN

ADDRESS BY MR. PROINSIAS DE ROSSA T.D.
IRISH MINISTER FOR SOCIAL WELFARE
AT THE WORLD SUMMIT FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
COPENHAGEN, WEDNESDAY 8 MARCH 1995


Mainstreaming Policy on both Poverty and Equality

 On behalf of the Government and people of Ireland, I wish to congratulate 
the United Nations on successfully bringing representatives of the world 
community together at this Summit on social development. I also wish to 
join with previous speakers in paying tribute to the warmth, hospitality 
and commitment of our hosts, the Government and people of Denmark.

 The issues of poverty and exclusion which we are considering this week 
could hardly be more universal, more fundamental or more disturbing. They 
are universal because, in one form or another, poverty and exclusion are to 
be found in every State and in every city and town on this planet. They are 
fundamental in that these problems blight the lives of 1000 million human 
beings, of whom 70% are women. And they are profoundly disturbing, because 
it is dearly wrong and unacceptable that poverty still dominates so much of 
life, at this point in history.

 It might be useful to consider where we stand, globally, by pondering a 
little of the history of my country, Ireland.

 The Irish Famine of the 1840s is noteworthy because it was the last time, 
other than during war, that a community in Western Europe faced poverty in 
the absolute form of mass hunger due to a failure of a subsistence crop. 
Due to failure of the potato crop and compounded by the laissez-faire 
capitalism of that time, over 1 million people died from hunger and disease 
while at least 1 million emigrated. 150 years later it is now inconceivable 
that such a famine could recur, in the privileged part of the world which 
includes Ireland.

 However, whilst no longer true for developed countries, famine is still 
the reality in large parts of the world; as are the other features which 
were to be found among Ireland's poor in the 1840s - disease, poor housing, 
absence of healthcare and education .

 We in the international community must ask ourselves the key question, why 
one group of countries has succeeded in largely eliminating absolute 
poverty while others have not? It is indisputable that the ruthless 
exploitation of the resources of weaker countries by the strong will, if we 
are honest with ourselves, be part of the answer.

 The Declaration and Programme of Action of this Summit sets the 
international community a goal which is ambitious: the elimination of 
"absolute poverty" . Speakers have referred to the adoption of this goal as 
historic. The hungry, the homeless, the unemployed and the desolate of our 
world are watching and listening and hoping that this is not just more 
windy rhetoric and that this Summit does indeed mark a decisive shift in 
the way that the world economy and society works. The responsibility for 
ensuring that shift lies at international as well as the national level.

 In Ireland, we have put in place a Strategy plan for Irish Aid, and under 
that plan, the Irish Government is committed to ambitious annual increases 
in the level of resources to be allocated to our development assistance. We 
are committed also to the achievement of the UN target of expenditure of 
0.7% of GNP on official development assistance and we have made progress 
towards this target, which we will continue to build on.

 We must be more alert however to the changing nature of the problems 
facing the developing world. Issues such as the redefining of policies in 
relation to the broad range of debt relief mechanisms; the different forms 
of expressions of gender inequalities including the unremunerated nature of 
much of the work of women and the unrealised role of civil society in the 
design, implementation and evaluation of aid programmes must inform our 
deliberations in this field to a greater extent.

 While this Summit's primary focus is on eliminating absolute poverty in 
the developing world, its second theme - the substantial reduction of 
overall poverty and inequalities everywhere - is also hugely important. The 
poor and socially excluded of Ireland and other developed countries may no 
longer be facing hunger to the same degree as they did in the 1840s; they 
are, however, facing lives of misery surrounded by "plenty".

 The persistence of poverty beside wealth in even the richest countries 
poses major questions. Why have economic benefits bypassed particular 
groups, communities and individuals? Why have our social policies and 
programmes failed to undo such inequalities? And the most challenging 
question of all: how do we alter the very pattern of wealth accumulation 
which ensures that, within countries as in the world at large, what 
enriches one person impoverishes others?

 Essentially, this Summit places the onus on governments, in a spirit of 
openness and partnership with interest groups, NGOs and the community, to 
determine the nature of their national poverty problem and to set down 
their plans for dealing with it.

 On behalf of the Irish Government, I am making here today Ireland's 
commitment to implement proposals to substantially reduce overall poverty 
in the shortest possible time and to reduce inequalities. In a domestic 
Irish context, the Summit marks an important point in the history of our 
social development because for the first time ever an Irish Government is 
committing itself to set out an across-the-board national strategy to 
address all aspects of poverty and inequality.

 In making this commitment I am not in any way underestimating the 
difficulty of the task . It will involve the most fundamental and searching 
appraisal of how we organise our society, especially how we treat our most 
vulnerable people. Our objective is to build a socially and economically 
inclusive society where equality of treatment, opportunity and esteem are 
the norm and where a participative democracy is the guiding principle in 
the economic and social spheres as well as in the political.

 We must find ways of enabling people not previously heard in our decision-
making structures to be heard and to participate. We will look critically 
at the extent to which our state services are capable of addressing the 
factors that keep people in poverty. We must place the questions of 
unemployment and poverty at the core of all public policies. This means in 
effect “mainstreaming” anti-poverty policy, so that all Government 
Departments and agencies target poverty and social exclusion in their 
policy-making and include the people affected in that policy making and its 
implementation .

 The potential for this “mainstreaming” initiative is more favourable than 
ever before, for both political and economic reasons. Economic 
circumstances are improving in Ireland and this will facilitate increased 
social spending. At the same time, the European Union has now recognised 
what some of us have long been saying: economic growth and competitiveness 
cannot proceed without social protection and development. The two must be 
inextricably linked, rather than the foolishness promoted by the economic 
pundits of the 1980s, which would have had us believe that the rising tide 
lifts all boats. This of course only benefits those with a boat- without 
one you drown. The debt crisis which exacerbated the North-South divide 
proved that development must be balanced - economically, socially and 
politically. This fundamental shift in the prevailing political economy of 
the EU is welcome and highly significant in an international context.

 In Ireland, much of our poverty is concentrated among families with 
children. The new Government have, therefore, decided to devote 
considerable resources to improving child support payments, as a first step 
towards introducing a basic income for all children. The fact is that women 
and children are disproportionately represented among the poorest sector of 
our society. The reasons are well known but alarmingly persistent. They 
include high unemployment, low labour force participation by women, low 
pay, continuing occupational segregation, and the fact that lone-parent 
households, overwhelmingly headed by women, have a higher than average 
risks of poverty.

 It is appropriate therefore to highlight, on International Women's Day, 
the fact that within weeks of coming to office, the present Irish 
Government, in announcing its social welfare budget - the largest in our 
history - committed some 60% of all extra expenditure for the coming year 
to measures which will specifically and directly benefit women and 
children. We have increased by 35% the monthly Child Benefit which, in the 
vast majority of cases, is paid to mothers. This payment is not taxed; is 
not withdrawn when a parent takes up employment or receives a pay increase; 
and is often the only source of independent income for women.

 This unprecedented increase in Child Benefit marks a decisive shift in the 
allocation of resources and is a radical break with the previous welfare 
policies, which often adopted a scatter-gun approach rather than focusing 
resources to resolve problems of poverty. Increasing Child Benefit is a 
highly effective way of diminishing real poverty and unemployment traps and 
empowering those households and individuals on the extreme edge of poverty.

 The ultimate aim of the strategy to which we are now committed must be 
nothing short of the transformation of society, both nationally and 
internationally, towards an inclusive and fully participatory model. The 
political, social and economic conditions for launching a serious assault 
on poverty and exclusion in Ireland are now better than ever before, and I 
feel confident that we in Ireland can live up to the national challenge 
which this: Copenhagen Summit has set us. We must prove collectively that 
we can rise to that challenge at the global level and that this is not just 
rhetoric. Both domestically and in all international fora where Ireland 
plays a role, I myself, and the Irish Government, will work constructively 
towards achieving these aims.

Ends.