UN reports highlights Irish poverty and inequality

BY ROBBIE SMYTH


"Grim statistics" and "shameful" facts was how Bertie Ahern described the findings of the UN Human Development report this week, which showed, apart from over a billion people living on less than a dollar a day, that the 26 Counties has still the second-highest level of poverty in the industrialised world.

Bertie was full of verbal concern on poverty in Africa and Asia, though short on action proposals, but well able to explain away poverty in Ireland. The 'problem', according to Ahern, is that the UN uses a different poverty measure from the Dublin government. That most of Europe also uses a different measure from the Dublin government was not mentioned.

Ahern has asked the ESRI to "examine all aspects of why the relative poverty levels remain high". It seems that despite the lack of housing, healthcare, education, low levels of welfare and multi-generational poverty in the 26 Counties, Ahern cannot understand why other poverty is still high here!

The message was that Bertie wants to act on poverty outside Ireland but thinks we are doing okay here. The UN wants all the richer states to give 0.7% of annual income to the poorer ones. Our government has given itself a leisurely seven years to reach this target. Ahern applauded himself because the 26 Counties is the seventh highest global aid contributor in percentage terms.

The 0.7% criteria is only a small piece of the global jigsaw. What is the government's position on fair trade, on the arms trade, on child labour, on multinational companies exploiting resource rich but cash poor states?

None of these were addressed by Ahern, but they are all crucial parts of solving the global poverty problem. Indeed, Ahern's attitude seems to be one that poverty and starvation is something happening in another world, not our one. At times we can all fall into using this terminology.

We can use the term 'third world', or maybe underdeveloped, less developed, indebted worlds, or even as the International Monetary Fund likes to talk about, Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs).

None of this will change the fact that there is just one world we live in and in that one world some of its people are being treated inexcusably.

According to the UN report, it will take 50 years to tackle some of the basic aspects of international poverty. This is interesting because at current investment levels it could take the Dublin government 40 years to tackle the housing problem in the 26 Counties. In 2001, we were promised that hospital waiting lists would be drastically cut within two years.

There is no real timescale for actually improving the 600 substandard primary schools across the 26 Counties and up to last year the government was convinced it had successfully tackled the unemployment problem even though there were still more than 100,000 people without jobs.

Last week, unemployment figures for June showed the highest monthly increase since 1986, with 11,747 new people jobless. This week's ESRI quarterly economic review predicted that unemployment could reach 6% in 2004, over 200,000.

Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said the ESRI report shows up the failure of the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrats economic strategy. He believes that the coalition has "failed to use the unprecedented economic upturn of the past six years to rebuild our infrastructure and greatly increase social provision, as they could have done", and that, "the failure to tackle social and economic exclusion means we have the highest level of poverty in the western world outside the US, as shown by today's UN report".

There is only one Ireland, and as much as we don't want a two-tier Ireland of haves and have nots, we should not accept a two-tier world either.



UN Human Development Report



1990 to 2003

54 states are poorer

34 states have falling life expectancy

21 states have more hungry people

14 states have higher rates of child mortality

12 states have shrinking school numbers

Income poverty increased in 37 states

25% of the populations of 19 states are starving

More than 1.2 billion have to live on less than $1 a day

At least 115 million children do not attend primary school

876 million adults are illiterate

10 million children die annually of preventable diseases, 30,000 a day

42 million people are living with aids

TB is causing two million deaths annually

More than 1 billion lack safe water

Diarrhoea killed more children in the 1990s than all people killed in armed conflicts since the Second World War