[Ireland] Poverty in North 'unacceptably high', says Hain

from Ireland On Line

The number of people living in poverty in the North is unacceptably high, Northern Secretary Peter Hain said today.

Announcing a new anti-poverty strategy he pledged the Government's commitment to work to eliminate poverty and social exclusion in the province by 2020.

"Despite Northern Ireland now having more employment than ever before and unemployment being at an historically low level, the numbers of households, families and children living in poverty remains unacceptably high," he said.

Speaking at the launch of the strategy - Lifetime Opportunities - he said it focused on different priority needs at different times in people's lives, from early years through to late years and defining specific goals and targets for each of the stages.

Addressing an audience of voluntary and community sector workers at the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action in Belfast, he said: "Early intervention is the key to preventing poverty.

"It is our aim to provide a children's centre in disadvantaged areas throughout Northern Ireland and to provide better services for children and their parents to ensure that the cycle of poverty is broken."

A priority had to be ensuring that the barriers to people joining or rejoining the labour market were removed by providing support to those who were unemployed or economically inactive, said Mr Hain.

"We are determined to eliminate the scourge of poverty which blights the lives of so many people in Northern Ireland and with continued economic growth and political stability there is perhaps now the best opportunity for decades to achieve this," he said.

Save the Children welcomed the strategy despite saying it had a number of concerns about the detail.

Alex Tennant of the charity said: "Given that one in three of our children are living in poverty, we believe that we need strong political direction to ensure that Northern Ireland gets on track to see the eradication of child poverty by 2020."

Describing the strategy as "a move in the right direction" he said it was encouraging children and poverty were two priorities coming out of the Comprehensive Spending Review.

"We hope that this will mean that we will see new and innovative policies and programmes developed which will focus on the children living in the most severe poverty," said Mr Tennant.