The Government's method of assessing poverty has been challenged by a member of the Human Rights Commission, which says that inequality is growing.
A quarter of Irish households have incomes of less than €138 a week, and the proportion of the population depending on 40 and 50 per cent of average income has risen since the beginning of the Government's national anti-poverty strategy, according to Dr Katherine Zappone, a member of the Human Rights Commission.
These facts were not evident in the Government's method of poverty assessment, Dr Zappone told the commission's first public consultation forum in Galway last night.
Her comments came just days after the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, disputed an assertion by the St Vincent de Paul that the families of 300,000 children were living on less than €175 a week.
That quarter of the population depending on less than €138 a week was living "above the survival line", but in poverty, Dr Zappone said.
Inadequacy of income was not just related to income, but to poor health conditions, low educational attainment and lack of adequate housing. Such assessments in relation to those who were not poor was a more effective way of measuring income inequality than the method applied in the Government's national anti-poverty strategy, she said.
Also addressing the public forum, Dr Vinodh Jaichand of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at NUI Galway, said the Human Rights Commission must carry out a complete "audit" of policy and promises made by governments in office. The performance of the government, and monies spent, must be reported on by the commission annually, he said.
"The issue of higher taxation is sometimes raised by politicians to frighten off any attempt to make social, economic and cultural rights enforceable in courts of law. In the absence of a national plan of action for the right to health, education, housing, food, water, social security, language and culture, it may not be possible to hold a government accountable," he said.
However, an annual "report card" on actual performance might well reveal that certain departments were underspending their allocated budgets, might also find other inefficiencies and might prove that more taxation was not required, Dr Jaichand added.
Ireland had agreed at international level to meet its core minimum obligations and the progressive realisation of economic, social and cultural rights, Dr Padraic Kenna of NUI Galway's law department told the forum.
However, at home the State was refusing to accept these obligations, when claimed by groups in need whose rights were affected. The Human Rights Commission must ensure that these core minimum obligations were legally established and enforced, he said.
Recent ESRI and NESC reports on administrative and management approaches to rights which ignored violations could fall into this category, he said, such as last month's ESRI report on rights-based services for people with disabilities, which poured cold water on a rights-based approach in the forthcoming Disability Bill.
Where violations occurred, there must be punitive measures, Dr Kenna added, and the Human Rights Commission must establish these, and prepare draft legislation to extend this approach to all areas of economic, social and cultural rights covered in human rights instruments.
Prof Gerard Quinn of NUI Galway, who is also a commission member, said that the debate about economic, social and cultural rights was long overdue and unnecessarily politicised in Ireland.
The commission faced a major challenge in demystifying these rights and helping to create the conditions for a proper and informed debate, especially about enforcement, he added.
Last night's forum in Galway is the first of a series which the commission intends to hold outside Dublin.