THE DOWNTURN in the economy will make it much more difficult for the Government to meet its target to eradicate poverty, the State's advisory body on tackling deprivation has warned.
The Government has pledged to reduce consistent poverty to between 2 and 4 per cent by 2012 and to eliminate it by 2016.
At present about 300,000 people are living in consistent poverty, the equivalent of living on an income of about €11,000 for a single person and being unable to afford essentials such as a proper meal or a winter coat.
At the launch of its annual report yesterday, the Combat Poverty Agency, a statutory organisation which advises the Government on tackling poverty, warned against deviating from these ambitious targets.
"It's people on low incomes who are being hit hardest by increases in the price of food and fuel. There will need, for example, to be above-inflation increases in welfare payments in the next budget," said the agency's acting director, Kevin O'Kelly.
"It's vital, too, that people on such low incomes are not hit with increases in indirect taxes.
"A higher proportion of such people would feel the effect of VAT increases to a much greater extent that the rest of the population."
While significant progress has been made in reducing poverty among older people through increases in pensions, Mr O'Kelly said much more needed to be done to tackle relatively high levels of poverty among lone parents, disabled people and children.
For example, latest figures for 2006 show that 27 per cent of lone parents were experiencing consistent poverty along with 18 per cent of those who are disabled or ill. In contrast, the proportion of over-65s in consistent poverty had fallen to 2.2 per cent. The national average is 6.9 per cent.
The agency says policies on employment, education and training need to have a strong anti-poverty dimension. Such national strategies must also be shaped at a local level if they are to have a strong impact.
"Policies developed centrally, without local input, are less likely to succeed because they fail to foster support among administrators who are closest to the citizen and most involved in delivering services," Mr O'Kelly said.
"Without strong two-way communications between national and local administrators, local officials feel distanced from what is happening at national level and it is difficult to get shared commitment."
As part of its recommendations to address these issues, Combat Poverty has highlighted the technical support it can provide to local authorities and other State bodies to assist them in meeting poverty-reduction targets.
It has completed guidelines to assist local authorities to undertake local poverty impact assessments, while it says it is also working with State bodies such as the HSE and the Financial Regulator on anti-poverty initiatives.
Agency chairman Brian Duncan said: "Central to ending poverty will be a consistent and coherent drive across all State institutions, ranging from national policies to their implementation at a local level, to deliver policies and achieve interim targets.
"Tackling poverty and social exclusion needs to be at the heart of policies on employment, education and training, health and housing.
"Current pressure points such as health inequalities, as well as food and fuel inflation, need to be addressed before they become very problematic."
Other targets in the Government's national action plan for social inclusion (2007-2016) are to provide pre-school education for children from disadvantaged urban areas; halve literacy problems among children from 30 per cent to less than 15 per cent; maintain a minimum rate of €200 per week for pensions in 2007 terms; and raise the employment rate of people with disabilities from 37 per cent to 45 per cent.