WE are now well past the half way mark of 1996, the year in which the United Nations announced its commitment to the eradication of poverty. And if the intervening months haven't quite seen the promised eradication, they have borne witness to an awful lot of talk about it.

It is now, for example, a widely held view that the cumulative effect of a life in poverty exacerbates the effects of any one illness. This view was given credence with the publication of the 1995 World Health Report which cited extreme poverty as the world's biggest killer and greatest cause of suffering and bad health.

It is a view also subsequently underwritten by the World Health Organisation in its choice of theme for a conference held in Maynooth last June and entitled "Poverty and Ill Health in Developing Countries".

Those of us who looked forward to the conference being informative and characterised by open debate were not disappointed. I do still wonder however, at the decision of the conference organisers to exclude poverty in Ireland from being addressed.

At the time, I was told that Ireland excludes itself from the debate, being classified as a "developed" country. But surely the dearth in our own social processes was worth some comment? Indeed, was the lack of such comment not at odds with a report, prepared by the Department of the Environment, which highlighted that many Irish people are living in areas characterised by crime, vandalism, drug addiction, poor environmental conditions and a lack of community structures? That departmental report was submitted to the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlement (Habitat II) held in Istanbul the very same month as the WHO conference in Maynooth.

So two conferences, two venues and two views as to whether or not Ireland exhibits sufficient poverty indicators to allow it to address its own social concerns within the very public international arena. To admit to being poor, or not to admit to being sufficiently poor? That would appear to be the question.

One could argue that Ireland has tried to answer such questions. Indeed, shortly after assuming the EU Presidency, the Department of Foreign Affairs hosted a meeting to discuss our development aid policies. I'm sure we were all reassured to learn that there is general agreement that this country understands development policy and takes a strategic long term view on its investment: in 1994, for example, Ireland spent more than the average among developed countries - on official development assistance as a percentage of arms spending. But in recognising the problems of, and giving assistance to, the "poorest of the poor" abroad, what is preventing us from acknowledging and dealing with similar problems at home?

Is it that Dublin is not a Sao Paulo, where it is left to the poor to creatively house themselves? Is it that we do not yet have another Cali, the capital city of Colombia, for which the words "drug capital of the world" would appear to have been especially coined? Perhaps. But media reports, under written by recent studies, have shown that we too have our homeless, our addicts, our problems.

In a research study undertaken in Tallaght in May of last year, for example, we learned that, in the four weeks of the sample period, there were at least 79 young people out of home or at risk of homelessness, which is more than there were in the whole of the Dublin area when I started working there 12 years ago. Similarly, research undertaken in the south west inner city of Dublin in May of this year indicated that there could be up to. 1,000 intravenous drug users among a population of 32,000; that 72 per cent of the people are reliant upon social welfare payments; and that most young people growing up in the area now are facing a life of long term unemployment and/or crime.

Why, then, are we adopting the attitude - in this, the year dedicated to the eradication of poverty - of allowing ourselves be seen by the international community to wave, but not to drown?

Perhaps it's that we haven't got our act together. Perhaps part of the problem is that responsibility for government response is distributed among various government departments with no one department having overall responsibility for planning a co ordinated approach to social problem solving. In this regard the anti poverty initiative taken late last year by the Minister of Social Welfare, to undertake a review of all government departments, policies and practices, is long overdue. The poor have long been aware that social injustice is a crime perpetrated across class and perpetuated by government. They therefore, await the Minister's report and action with anticipation.

In the meantime, we will rely on information from the WHO which indicates that, while spending on health - in the poorest countries has plummeted - because of a combination of severe cuts in government expenditure and official aid - Ireland has sufficient resources to pledge to increase the ratio of its overseas development aid to GNP in the coming years. But we may wonder why, then, in terms of dealing with the problems on its own front doorstep, our government seems less than willing to provide a clearly defined means by which to alleviate the social ills of the people it represents.

The Minister for Social Welfare, in response, may well quote statistics which show that social welfare spending has been increasing; he may try to demonstrate that the level of benefit has been more than keeping pace with inflation. But the fact of the matter is that there has been a sharp reduction in social welfare spending, relative to GDP, prior to our recent economic boom.

The Minister is an elected representative, merely a tool of the people. Why are we then, as a democratic society, prepared to support the fact that social welfare recipients have been getting a decreasing proportion of national income, despite the fact that the rest of us have become better off? Why are we less than eager to acknowledge the gross inequalities that exist among the citizens of this State?

No one would, or should, deny that Ireland has a role to play as a member of the international community: our third world development work and peacekeeping roles are legendary. But in pursuing a sense of justice abroad, let us not become inured to what constitutes social justice at home.