Cost of living crisis could pull more children into poverty, Minister tells Social Inclusion Forum

The cost of living crisis has the potential to pull even more children into poverty and provides a strong mandate for an “anti-poverty budget”, the Minister of State for Social Inclusion Joe O’Brien has said.

Speaking at this year’s Social Inclusion Forum (SIF), Mr O’Brien told attendees that even a short period of poverty can damage a child’s long term life chances.

He made his remarks following appeals from NGOs and representative groups outlining how rising inflation was affecting various communities.

“I think what the people are calling for is a realisation that this is as bad as it has ever been and there needs that same concerted effort to alleviate what’s going on at the moment,” Ann Irwin of Community Work Ireland (CWI) said after Wednesday’s event.

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CWI and European Anti-Poverty Network Ireland held four regional sessions in the build up to the forum aimed at taking the pulse of public need, with the spiralling cost of living dominating concerns.

The SIF is an annual national event hosted by the Department of Social Protection, aiming to provide people affected by poverty and social exclusion, and the community organisations representing them, with an opportunity to engage directly with officials from relevant Government departments.

Traveller representative organisation Pavee Point, the Children’s Rights Alliance, the Disability Federation of Ireland, and the Independent Living Movement Ireland were among the groups represented.

The forum focused on the Government’s Roadmap for Social Inclusion, which aims to reduce consistent poverty rates to 2 per cent or less by 2025, and to position Ireland within the top five countries in the EU under a number of leading social inclusion measures.

“While we in Government welcome the reductions in many of the poverty statistics and the effectiveness of our social welfare system, we are conscious that rates are still too high and that these national averages do not apply equally to all groups,” Mr O’Brien said in his opening remarks.