Stealth taxes are the "biggest single" factor behind increasing poverty and growing inequality, the vice president of the Society for St Vincent de Paul has said.
Mr John Monaghan, speaking at the publication yesterday of the charity's annual report, said charges such as bin taxes, increases in hospital and GP charges, fuel and transport cost increases and education costs were causing those with low disposable incomes "to find themselves pushed even harder to make ends meet".
Even those on the minimum wage would not be eligible for the medical card once the minimum wage increased to €7 per hour, he said.
"We have people coming to us who are neglecting their own health because they cannot afford to go to their GP. Or if they do they don't have enough money to pay bills, to buy food."
While the report indicates a 14 per cent spending increase by the charity, its biggest single expenditure increase was in helping with fuel and electricity bills. The society's report says calls for help to its national head office have increased by 80 per cent, from about 5,000 last year to 9,259 by last Friday.
The fastest growing group of people seeking the society's help were those in work but on low incomes.
"This situation is not acceptable in what is now one of the richest countries in the world," said the society's president, Mr Brian O'Reilly.
The report records a spending increase of 14 per cent last year compared with 2001, to €32.3 million.
Cash assistance was up 12 per cent, spending on food was up 7 per cent, on fuel and ESB up 38 per cent and on educational support an increase of 6 per cent was recorded.
Mr Monaghan said Ireland "now ranks top of the list of EU countries with the biggest gap between its richest and poorest people", with 22 per cent of Irish people living on less than €147 per week. He rejected an assertion by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, in the past fortnight that the numbers of children living in poverty were not as high as the society claimed - Mr Ahern had disputed an assertion that 300,000 children were living in households with less than €175 per week.
"Despite what the Taoiseach said last weekend, 300,000 children are living on less than €175 per week. I don't know where he got his information because we got our information from the Government's own Combat Poverty Agency, which in turn got its figures from the National Action Plan Against Poverty and Social Exclusion (NAPAPSE), which says 23.4 per cent of children are living in poverty. That's 300,000 children."
The plan was drawn up by the Department of Social and Family Affairs. Some 70,000 children were living in consistent poverty, or in households lacking such basics as a hot meal every day. "It is cruel indictment in one of the wealthiest societies children went to school this morning under nourished," said Mr Monaghan. The report pays particular attention to homelessness and the society provides housing and shelter to 1,200 people in 18 hostels and 66 housing projects. "The need for social housing is so great that when the society opened its newest sheltered housing project, St Broc's in Dublin, it received over 100 applications for the 31 available units," says the report.
The society has sought among other measures, a €15.40 increase in the lowest social welfare rate to a minimum of €140 a week as well as increases in the Child Dependent Allowance and increases in Family Income Supplement.
