The Government should ensure in the next Budget that every adult receives an income of at least £75 a week, the Conference of Religious of Ireland has said.
In a submission to today's preBudget forum organised by Mr Ahern, the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs, the directors of CORI's justice office, Father Sean Healy and Sister Brigid Reynolds, will stress that the "bulk of available resources were allocated to the better-off in the 1998 Budget".
CORI said that Budget marked "the triumph of greed over need".
In its meeting with Mr Ahern, CORI will urge that "the priorities of the 1998 Budget should be reversed and priority given in the 1999 Budget to ensuring that every person has this minimal level of income". Father Healy and Sister Reynolds will demand that the Budget should allocate "substantial resources to tackle all aspects of poverty", with tax cuts focused on the low-paid.
They note that the recent UN Human Development Report ranked Ireland 16th out of 17 countries in the industrialised world in terms of the proportion of people living in poverty, behind only the USA. It also found that Irish women are worse off relative to men than in any other Western country.
Despite this, "the major focus of public debate does not seem to recognise the persistence of extensive poverty in the Ireland of the `Celtic Tiger'. If poverty is not eliminated in this period of abundant resources it will never be eliminated".
Father Healy and Sister Reynolds say many social inclusion commitments in the Partnership 2000 agreement have not been met. They say the Government has provided only 2,000 - instead of the promised 10,000 - jobs promised under the CORI-inspired scheme for unemployed people to do full and part-time community-based work at standard pay rates.