THE present talks on a new national agreement should include specific measures to tackle poverty, according to the director of the Combat Poverty Agency.
Mr Hugh Frazer was speaking at the publication of two reports from the Economic and Social Research Institute - "Poverty in the 1990s" and "A Review of the Commission of Social Welfare's Minimum Adequate Income".
The former uses data from a new source, the 1994 Living in Ireland Survey, which is the Irish element of a new European Community Household Panel. It is the first such survey since 1987.
"This report should shatter our complacency," said Mr Frazer. "In the 1990s poverty remains a very deep-seated and serious problem."
While the report showed that some progress had been made, especially for those on the lowest social welfare payments, the gap between rich and poor had increased.
"Overall the findings suggest that our efforts over the past seven years to tackle poverty and build a more inclusive society have not been sufficiently radical.
"We have kept the lid on the pot and have ameliorated some of the worst excesses but they have not addressed the unacceptable degree of inequality of resources and opportunities that persists in Irish society."
He said he hoped that the National Anti-Poverty Strategy and the new national programme would propose radical measures to address "once and for all" these deep-seated inequalities.
The Minister for Social Welfare, Mr De Rossa, said that while the reports showed that significant progress had been made, further improvements in social welfare payment levels were required.
The reports, along with the National Anti-Poverty Strategy, which was now entering its final phase, would be central to the formulation of Government policy and action.
The Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed (INOU) said the minimum income review reinforced the position established a decade ago that social welfare incomes were below the poverty line.
"The key finding is that the minimum rate is still a viable benchmark and that it has not yet been achieved.
"It further points out that while progress has been made towards the minimum rate this progress has slowed down in the last three years. There has been no commitment to meet the minimum adequate rate either by this Government or by the current PCW."
The lowest basic rate necessary for survival envisaged by the Commission on Social Welfare in 1985, and recommended as an urgent priority, was £45 a week, which would be £68 today. The cost of raising social welfare payments to that level would be a 1.5 per cent increase in tax rates (or tax cuts forgone), while an increase to the upper level recommended by the Commission would mean a rise of 11 per cent, according to Mr Brian Nolan, one of the authors of both reports.