An increase of at least €12 in the lowest social welfare rate is required in next month's Budget if the Government is to meet its commitment to the National Anti-Poverty Strategy (NAPS), it has been claimed.
The Justice Commission of the Conference of Religious of Ireland (CORI) said the minimum weekly payment to a single person should rise from €124.80 to €138.80 in order to keep a 2007 benchmarking target on track.
Under the NAPS, the Government said it would benchmark social welfare rates to increases in average industrial wages, pledging by 2007 to achieve a rate of €150 a week in 2002 terms for the lowest rates of social welfare.
Using ESRI projections for growth in average industrial wages, the commission estimated that the Government needed a minimum social welfare payment of €182.70 in 2007.
This translates as an average increase in the payment of €14.47 over the next four budgets. Suggesting a minimum increase of €12 in Budget 2004, followed by higher increases in subsequent years, the commission said the Government target was one of the few areas of the anti-poverty strategy that would "tackle the scale of the poverty, inequality and social exclusion being experienced by so many people in Ireland today".
Describing the recently published Estimates as "disappointing", the Catholic Church body added that every budget the Government had introduced since 1997 "has seen the better off getting more than Ireland's poorest people". The most recent data on income distribution shows that the top 10 per cent of the population receive more than the poorest 50 per cent.
"A society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable people. By this measurement Ireland is failing dismally."
