Human Resources Committee on June 12th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I'd like to start the meeting.

First of all, I'd like to thank our guests and witnesses today from Ireland. Thank you very much for rearranging your schedules so that we could hear from you an hour earlier. As you know, in government things can sometimes change on the fly. We have some votes a little bit later, so we figured it would be better, for the sake of continuity, to sit for two hours as opposed to breaking it up and maybe not being able to get back. So I want to thank you all for your accommodation and for being flexible for us.

I'll introduce you just as you appear on my list. We have Gerry Mangan, director of the Office for Social Inclusion; Kevin O'Kelly, director of the Combat Poverty Agency; and Bevin Cody, head of communications and public affairs for the Combat Poverty Agency. We also have Professor Tim Callan from the Economic and Social Research Institute in Ireland.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Again, thank you for rearranging your schedules so that you could be with us. As you are probably aware, here at the human resources committee we are just undertaking a study on poverty in Canada. We understand that you men and women have been doing some great things over in Ireland. We appreciate your taking time to share with us some of the successes you have had.

Gerry, I'm going to start with you, sir. Each of you will have ten minutes. Once we have gone through your presentations, we will start with our rounds of questions.

Yes, Mr. Savage.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I'm not sure if our Irish friends have any idea of how our Parliament works. Might you just explain to them how many are on the committee, the composition of the committee, and from whom they'll be getting questions?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Sure. Thank you very much for that.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

Maybe you could let them know what time it is here.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Yes.

It's 8 o'clock in the morning here. But you probably know that.

I'll just tell you how our committees work. We are in a minority government over here, so we will have questions from both opposition and government members. We have four members from the government, the Conservatives. We have four members from the Liberal Party. We have two members from the Bloc and we have one member from the NDP; I know that some of you have been talking with Mr. Martin about poverty over the years and over time.

I am the chair, of course, and I'm with the Conservative Party.

So that's a little bit about who we are. After your ten minutes each, we will go to seven-minute rounds, followed by five-minute rounds, of questions and answers. We'll rotate around the table so that all members get a chance to ask some questions.

Once again, thank you very much for making yourselves available with all your schedules. Thank you as well for your flexibility in coming in an hour early today so that we could work our votes around our committee meeting and have a fulsome discussion today.

And thank you, Mr. Savage, for that suggestion.

As I said, Gerry, I'm going to kick off with you, sir. You have ten minutes. Thank you for being here.

[Gerry Mangan, Director, Office for Social Inclusion, Government of Ireland]

Thank you very much, Chairman.

I'd just like to say how pleased we are to have this opportunity to talk to you about our poverty strategy here in Ireland. We're conscious that it's our experience, which would, of course, also be partly a European experience. Hopefully it will be of interest to you.

Can you hear me okay?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Perfectly.

[Gerry Mangan]

Okay.

We didn't have as much difficulty as I suspect you had in changing our schedule. We're just here mid-morning in Ireland, and we are conscious of your very early start to be here with us. We're very pleased the changes you had to introduce didn't prevent us from having this exchange of views.

I'm conscious of the time scale, so I will go through my presentation very quickly, and then I'll hand over to my colleagues.

Just to set down in overall terms what I propose to do, I would hope to just give you the Irish context for combating poverty and why we have come to the particular approach we have. I'll talk then about our poverty strategy and how it developed. I'll then finish off with a few general words on the impact it is having here in Ireland.

The context you're probably quite aware of in Canada as you have close enough relations with Ireland. As you may have known, Ireland has long been associated with high levels of unemployment, underemployment, emigration, and poverty. When we joined the European Union in 1973, GDP per capita income was just 60% of the EU average. Then after significant economic progress in the sixties and seventies, there was a deterioration in the economic situation, which was precipitated by the oil shocks in the late seventies, something we're perhaps experiencing to some extent again. We also had high public sector debt.

To try to bring us back, or to continue the economic development and whatever, a social partnership process began in 1987. It had to develop a national consensus on the steps to be taken to achieve economic development, and this was one of the key influences and the key ways of developing our overall economic and social strategy in the period since.

Then, of course, in the 1990s came the phenomenon that came to be known as the Celtic Tiger, which involved unprecedented levels of economic growth accompanied by major reductions in unemployment and long-term unemployment, major increases in female participation in the workforce leading to growing numbers of two-income families, a virtual end to involuntary emigration, a major increase in return migration, and a huge increase in immigration of foreign nationals, which, in a short time, rose from virtually none to 10% to 15% of the population, with most coming from central and eastern Europe. In recent years, our unemployment has been among the lowest in the EU, and our GDP per capita now is among the highest.

As I mentioned, however, the oil prices and the credit crunch are beginning to put a temporary halt to the degree of economic progress we're making.

That's just the context of how Ireland has evolved, mainly economically. Despite this economic development, poverty persisted. Through this, we became most aware of the complexity of poverty in terms of the diverse needs of different vulnerable groups like families and children, older people, ethnic minorities, and so on. The range of different policies and programs in place to cater directly for their needs, such as income support, employment support, education, health care, and housing, were largely uncoordinated and unintegrated. Then there was the indirect impact of other policies, like revenue taxation, justice and equality, community development, environment, local government, and so on.

We're very conscious also that what we might be doing through policies to directly combat poverty in some ways could be undone in part by other, more general policies. Then, of course, there's the impact of EU support, guidance, and requirements, and of other international organizations, such as the Council of Europe, OECD, and the UN. All of these influences were also complex for the poor by virtue of the fact that there were different objectives, different agendas in each policy area, and processes that could conflict at times and result in suboptimal outcomes being achieved.

There was also a lack of clear, scientific knowledge on the true scale, nature, and causes of poverty, and therefore on how best to deploy resources to the best effect to combat it. There could also be a fatalistic attitude that poverty will always be with us and that the main task was simply to alleviate it. There was little consciousness that apart from issues of social justice, poverty has a major economic cost currently and into the future. Therefore, resources for combating poverty should be seen more in terms of social investment that will enhance economic development now and into the future, rather than as a burden on the economy. That was the context in which a deepening understanding of poverty was developed.

So it became obvious through all this that there was not clear responsibility for combatting poverty in the round. There was no integrated strategy with goals, objectives, targets, and indicators to measure not just inputs and outputs, but, most importantly, outcomes.

It was against that background, then, that the process was developed. The first national anti-poverty strategy was introduced in 1997, and it was influenced to some extent by the UN summit in Copenhagen, the social partnership office, and the Combat Poverty Agency, which you'll be listening to later.

Then in 2002 we had a revised strategy that took account of the impact of the Celtic Tiger. We were a richer country. We had more resources. We had more confidence in terms of what we could do; therefore, the revised strategy was more ambitious.

Then we had an EU intervention whereby the EU got involved in trying to encourage and help countries to develop a strategic approach. That will be dealt with later by my colleague, Kevin, from the Combat Poverty Agency.

Then the social partnership office became involved. It began to negotiate the basic provisions; it fleshed out the strategies. And we have a current plan, which was just agreed to in 2006, entitled “Towards 2016”, which was designed to apply over the next 10 years.

In terms of how we structure the strategy, first of all, we began with challenges, trends, and emerging issues. We began to really understand what the nature and causes of poverty were. We began to identify areas such as child poverty, growth of female participation in the workforce, and lone parents. These were the main trends. Then there was growing immigration. We set an overall aim, and the current overall aim is to reduce basic poverty by between 2% and 4% by 2012 and to eliminate it by 2016.

We adopted a life cycle approach to try to promote greater integration. Our life cycles are children, people of working age, older people, and other categories such as people with disabilities, and communities. We then set goals for each life cycle. For example, in relation to children, we have goals for education and income support. In relation to people of the working-age category, we have employment participation, income support. For communities it was deemed to achieve greater policy coordination and integration.

We have 157 time-bound targets. These are particular aims to be achieved by given dates, and then we have the measures to achieve those objectives and targets, such as income support, health, and so on.

When it comes down to the administrative structures--I'm coming towards the end--we build them up from the bottom. We have social inclusion units in each government department and local authority. We then have the Office for Social Inclusion--the office I'm director of--which is, again, there to coordinate the whole process at each level. We have a social partnership review group, where employers, trade unions, farmers, and the community and voluntary sector are involved in reviewing and monitoring progress. We have a forum for consultation--a social inclusion forum--which enables us to meet with people experiencing poverty. Then we have a senior officials group, people at the high level in government departments--I'm a member of it--which provides a whole-of-government form of coordination, and they report to a cabinet committee chaired by the Prime Minister.

Then at the EU level we have a social protection committee whereby the process is coordinated at the European level.

In terms of its impact--and I'm sure we can talk about this later in response to questions--I'd say that one of the fundamental things is there is greater awareness of poverty, its scope, and its causes right through government, right through the social partners, and among the public generally. There are now clear goals, targets, and a focus on outcomes. So we feel we're more in control of what's happening here. We know where we're going. We know where we want to arrive at. We know what needs to be done to arrive at where we want to go, and there's a recognition of the need for more integrated approaches. We have several examples of how, when departments work together at both the national and local levels, we achieve better outcomes.

There is a great mobilization of all the actors, so it's not just left to government. We bring in local governments and the social partners, all the voluntary groups and whatever.

They're working more together, communicating exchanges on a much more practical, focused level. And of course we're also working with our fellow member states in the European Union, so there's a greater all-Europe--in ways--determination to combat poverty.

To finish, in terms of policy outcomes, some of the key ones would be the activation of people who are long-term unemployed or out of the workforce during their working age to get them back into the workforce through a combination of income supports and employment supports; a coordinated approach for family and child support; and major improvements in homelessness. A quick response to the challenge of immigration is also a significant feature of the process. These are just some brief examples of our policy outcomes.

I'll finish there and move on to my colleague, Professor Tim Callan, who will take it from there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

I would encourage witnesses to speak a little bit slower so that translation can keep up.

We always do this. We give you 10 minutes to fit in days and days of information, so thank you very much.

Were you going to pass it off to Tim next?

[Gerry Mangan]

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Okay.

[Dr. Tim Callan, Professor, Economic and Social Research Institute, Ireland]

Thanks also for the opportunity to talk to you on this.

I am going to try to cut my cloth to my measure here and keep what I say to what will fit into 10 minutes. I've sent you some information in advance.

There are two main areas I want to talk about. One is to do with what is sometimes called “poverty-proofing”, or, more recently, “poverty impact assessment”. It has to do with the monitoring of how major policy, particularly tax and welfare policy, impacts on poverty, and the implications of that.

In the second part, as an economist I suppose I want to play to my comparative advantage and try to spin a story around the big picture of how we moved from an economy with 15% unemployment to one with 5% or less, and the associated changes that Gerry was talking about, and try to fit that together in a story.

First of all, in terms of the poverty impact assessment, there is a general idea in the strategy that Gerry was talking about that government departments would assess their policies and programs at the design and review stages to see what impact they would have on poverty or on inequalities that are likely to lead to poverty. I want to focus in particular on how that's done in relation to tax and benefit policy, or what you might talk about as tax and social security policy.

There the idea is that a lot of the action is around what happens to people who are on welfare, or on social security more generally, and the payment rates they receive in relation to other people in the economy at a time of very rapid growth. We've used for that a tax benefit model that is sometimes called a microsimulation model, of which you have a number in Canada. I know Statistics Canada is involved in that sort of work as well.

We would look at trying to compare the impact of each year's budget in setting major tax and social security policy parameters or rates of payment and so on. We'd look at the impact of the actual policy changes compared to a neutral scenario. I won't go into detail on the construction of that, but essentially it involves a distributionally neutral scenario that involves roughly indexing the rates of payment and tax bands and so on in line with wage growth, with wages being the dominant form of income in the economy.

This is something that has been done in the Irish context with Gerry's department, the Department of Social and Family Affairs, and with the Department of Finance, which actually undertakes that as part of their annual budget documentation.

I'm not sure if you have some slides I sent over, but it's intriguing to see that in comparing five years in the mid-1990s--1993 to 1997--and then a more recent period, the distributional pattern associated with the policy changes over those periods is quite different.

Now, I don't want to suggest that this is entirely to do with this measurement and modelling approach, but I think, as Gerry was saying, that when attention is focused on something--when it is made measurable and monitorable--it does have implications for the outcomes you get, and you'll see in that comparison that in the later period, when this had taken hold, the distributional pattern is much more strongly pro-poor, and that there is in fact an associated reduction in the general measures of poverty.

The flip side of that coin is perhaps well illustrated by recent developments in the U.K. that you may have come across: a big political reaction to the abolition of the 10% rate of tax. One aspect of that again has to do with this issue of the choice of targets and which targets are available.

In the U.K., there is a target for reduction of child poverty. There is no target for the reduction of general poverty. In that setting, it's easy to see how a focus exclusively on the child poverty element can make something seem like a good idea when, if the more general target were also in use, that might have been headed off at the pass.

I'm going turn to the second half of what I wanted to cover, which is to fit together some of these ideas about what's going on in the general economy and the evolution of poverty in Ireland. I think it's pretty clear from comparison with best-practice countries such as the Scandinavians that the reduction in poverty can't be done simply on the basis of paying more in terms of welfare rates, nor can it be done simply in terms of a strategy that relies purely on work, which may be the ones adopted elsewhere, but the combination of both of those is very powerful.

In the Irish context, for reasons I won't go into because they're quite complicated, it's not a single-factor explanation for what happened in terms of what's often called the Celtic Tiger, but the unemployment problem was tackled and solved, with the rate falling from 15% to 5%. That's the first part of the action, but in the second part of it, there are substantial increases in welfare payments, in the first place, for those of pension age, and at a later stage, for other rates of welfare payment. With that combination of scenarios, there have been significant reductions in poverty on the usual measures in Ireland.

One of those measures is what's termed “consistent poverty”, which was developed particularly by colleagues of mine at the ESRI, Brian Nolan and Chris Whelan—and perhaps if you're interested in it, we can go into that in greater detail. The other measure often used is one that is more like relative income poverty, which is similar to the low-income measures used by StatsCan. But over the full period that we're talking about, there would have been reductions in both of those measures.

I hope that helps to give you something to quiz me about later, some leads, and I'll pass the baton to Combat Poverty.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Professor. I'm sure, of course, there'll be lots of questions.

I guess you're turning it over now to Kevin.

Kevin, thank you very much. We're looking forward to your 10 minutes.

[Kevin O'Kelly, Director, Combat Poverty Agency, Government of Ireland]

Thank you very much, Chair.

My colleague Bevin Cody is with me, as you mentioned earlier. Bevin will join in the question and answer session later on.

First of all, I'd like to say that I join with Gerry and Tim in welcoming this opportunity to talk to you. In fact, I had the privilege of visiting the building you're in about three years ago and doing a tour of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, so I'm delighted with this opportunity.

I'm just going to deal with two issues. First of all, I'll tell you a bit about what Combat Poverty does, what our role is, and then I'll pick up on what Gerry mentioned earlier around the European context and where the system that Gerry and Tim have outlined fits into the European context.

To start, the Combat Poverty Agency is a state agency. It was set up by statute in 1986, so we're over 20 years old. Within the European Union it's a fairly unique organization; there isn't an organization in any of the other member states that would have a similar role set up by statute.

Under the act setting us up, we have four key functions: the first is to give policy advice to the minister and to the government on social and economic planning in relation to poverty; the second is to undertake and evaluate programs and actions aimed at overcoming poverty; the third is to promote, commission, and undertake research into the nature, causes, and extent of poverty; and the fourth is to promote a greater understanding of poverty through communications and public education.

These functions would include working with the NGOs and the community and voluntary sector in Ireland and also promoting the use of community development as a way of overcoming poverty.

We're required by the act to draw up a strategic plan every three years--in fact, we're in the process of doing that at the moment--and these plans should reflect the national policy framework that's in existence at the time of their drafting. For example, as was outlined earlier, the strategic plan for the next three years that we're drafting at the moment would very much focus on the life cycle approach: looking at children, people of working age, older people, people with disabilities, and communities. That's in place at the moment and is part of the strategy we're using in Ireland.

Our work at the moment involves a number of these areas. For example, we've done quite a bit of work on the whole issue of child poverty, which is quite a major problem in Ireland. Linked to that, of course, is the problem of lone parents, and it would be in these two categories or groups that we would find the highest levels of poverty.

Another key issue we've been investigating is older people, and indeed the impact of government action is very well founded in the results of looking at older people, because through the budgetary process over the last number of years there has been a focus on dealing with poverty among older people and people living on pensions, and we have seen a reduction in the number of older people living in poverty.

Two other areas that we're focused on in Combat Poverty at the moment are around financial exclusion, meaning that people can't access bank accounts and can't access credit; consequently, they have difficulty in finding employment because they need a bank account, and there's a catch-22 situation. We're working with the financial institutions here, the financial regulator, and the ministry of finance on how to tackle that.

Finally, a new issue that is raising its head over the last number of years, not just in Ireland but in Europe, is around low-income workers and consequently low-income families. We are involved in doing research on that and looking at it as an issue that needs to be addressed at a national level.

Our work also involves working with the local authorities, because rolling out a lot of the strategy means actions and programs at the local level. So we work very closely with the local authorities and with the health services, as well as undertaking funding and research on poverty trends and blue-sky studies to identify new or emerging forms of poverty.

Tim talked about the budgetary process a few minutes ago. Indeed, one of the key requirements that we have each year is to make a budget submission to the various departments on what we see needing to be done in the state budget each year. Working with Tim and his colleagues in the Economic and Social Research Institute, we also analyze the budget using the models that Tim has described.

The second issue I'd like to draw your attention to is the European context in which all of this fits. Back in 1997, just over 10 years ago, under the Amsterdam treaty, the European Union, funded by and working with the European Commission, set up an employment strategy to try to tackle the high levels of unemployment in the European Union. Following on from that, the Lisbon strategy was adopted at a meeting of the heads of government on the economic and social direction of the European Union in Lisbon in early 2000. That strategy included tackling poverty and social exclusion. In trying to push this agenda forward, the European Commission issues guidelines every year for the member states to measure their actions in tackling poverty and social exclusion. Every two years, the member states are required to submit to the commission a national report on social inclusion, pensions, and social protection, and then a joint report is adopted by the heads of government at their spring meeting each year.

Part of this process is what's called the soft law approach. We have the open method of coordination in which you have peer reviews where experts from member states look at the approaches taken in other member states and give their views and feedback on how member states are progressing with their particular objectives under the guidelines. There are a number of transnational actions and programs funded by the European Commission. Part of all of this is the yearly survey that is carried out under the guidance of Eurobarometer, called the European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions, which gives us the data by which to measure the progress we're making.

Finally, I would say that today is quite an interesting day for you to come to us in Ireland, because today we're voting on the Lisbon treaty, and we're the only country to do so, as the other 26 countries are adopting the treaty through a parliamentary process. It's interesting that for the first time in a EU treaty, social exclusion is enshrined as an objective. Article 3 of the treaty says that the Union

shall combat social exclusion and discrimination, and shall promote social justice and protection, equality between women and men, solidarity between generations and protection of the rights of the child.

If the treaty is passed by the end of this year, that will be enshrined in the new European Union treaties. The treaty also commits the EU to the eradication of poverty and the protection of human rights in a world-wide approach. And the treaty allows for the establishment of an advisory social protection committee with a mandate to promote cooperation between the member states, and with the European Commission, on social protection policies.

The Lisbon treaty, which hopefully will be passed in Ireland today and will be adopted by the end of this year, will also enshrine the battle to tackle poverty and social exclusion at a European level into the fundamental laws of the union.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Kevin.

What we're going to do now is start with our first round, which will consist of four rounds of seven minutes from each party. The first party will be from the opposition, the Liberal Party.

Mr. Savage, you have seven minutes.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you, Chair.

Good morning to you. We're really delighted to have the opportunity to chat with you today. Like other members of this committee, I'm part of the Irish diaspora, having been born in the north and having deep roots in the Republic, and many relatives over there.

It certainly gives me an awful lot of pride and pleasure to see the great progress that's been made in Ireland in terms of combatting poverty. As Gerry mentioned, there have been lots of economic challenges in Ireland over the years. Today Ireland is flourishing in so many ways. It's third in the index of economic freedom, fifth in the UN human development index. In 2005 it was first in the Economist Intelligence Unit's quality of life index, measuring health and family life, community life, job security, gender equality, and things like that.

I think by any measure the work that's been done in Ireland has certainly been very positive. We were hoping, as Gerry would know, to get over there next week to talk to you and take part in the conference on basic income. Hopefully we'll have a chance to do that in person sometime, but we appreciate the fact that we have this opportunity today.

We want to do something significant in Canada in terms of battling poverty, and we have to work out the measures and work out all those sorts of things.

I'd like to just ask, first of all, if I could, those of you who were there at the beginning, in 1997 and before that, if you could give us a recommendation based on your experience.

How do you mobilize the general population to the importance of bringing in a significant and robust anti-poverty campaign for a nation?

[Gerry Mangan]

I suppose it happens at a number of levels. I think, first of all, there needs to be a strong government commitment from the top. What's actually at issue here is not necessarily more resources, although that's part of it, but it's a recognition that if we're to tackle poverty, we need to adopt a strategic approach, we need to know what the nature and scope and scale of poverty is, and we need to know what our objectives are and so on. It's that strategic thinking that is essential.

The second thing is that you need to believe that it can actually be effectively tackled. There's almost a kind of passive attitude that poverty will always be with us. It's harder then to mobilize people. In Ireland, we already had—that's why I mentioned this, maybe at too much length—a social partnership process there, involvement of employers, trade unions, and so on. They were engaged and they became committed to the project, so government could work with some of the key players in relation to combatting poverty.

Then more organized non-governmental groups came onboard, and they also were of great assistance because they represented the needs of people, they knew exactly what was happening on the ground, and they became part and parcel of the process as well.

I think it was that dynamic, led by government, that helped to galvanize the whole approach to combatting poverty, mixed in with a certain amount of frustration that despite a lot of effort, the outcomes weren't being achieved to the extent necessary. I think that's what happened.

Ten years down the road, there's absolutely no criticism of the strategy. There's criticism that not enough has been done and that things aren't being done well enough, but everyone accepts, at all levels of government and in civil society, that a strategic approach is necessary.

That actually happened in the European Union. I was involved in the European Union committees at the outset as well. I remember arguing strongly from an Irish experience how important a strategic approach was. Countries had reservations about it, they had reservations about EU involvement, but 10 years down the road, nobody but nobody queries this approach or how useful it is.

I suppose that is how I see how it happened. Of course, it developed on an incremental basis. In 2002 we went a lot farther than we had previously, and further again now. But once you get the process started, it will take on a life of its own, and people will see the merit in it.

[Kevin O'Kelly]

Could I maybe come in on that, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Sure, go ahead, Kevin.

[Kevin O'Kelly]

Thank you.

It's an interesting challenge, and maybe Bevin would have something to say on this, but one of the problems, Mr. Savage, would be that in a wealthy economy it's very difficult to get the message across that there is poverty.

Twenty years ago, or even ten years ago when we had high emigration from Ireland and we had the high unemployment, poverty was fairly obvious in Ireland. You saw it in the dole queues and on the streets. But now it's very different, and even though there's quite a bit of poverty around, it's very difficult to get that message across. Bevin has been looking at some research done by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that found that this was a particular difficulty in the U.K. also.

Twenty years ago when we started the social partnership arrangements, as Gerry mentioned, the first agreement in 1987 was called the “Programme for National Recovery”. The economic and social situation in Ireland was so bad at that stage that we needed some agreement on national recovery, and that certainly set the basis and set the framework by which the Celtic Tiger economy developed in the 1990s. But it became fairly obvious during the 1990s that the sharing of the Celtic Tiger was not equal, and at that stage it was thought to be crucial to expand the negotiations from tripartite government-trade unions-employer agreements to much wider social agreements. So the community and voluntary sector were brought in to put a social dimension into the economic developments that were taking place. There was a need to expand partnerships to recognize the need to share the wealth that was being created.

Bevin.

[Bevin Cody, Head, Communications and Public Affairs, Combat Poverty Agency, Government of Ireland]

I think what Kevin has said is right, that public opinion and public attitudes probably are very important in actually getting the process going. However, I think political leadership is very important in terms of sustaining the progress that's made.

The third thing I'd say is that there needs to be a strong focus on building the capacity of the various actors that you need to mobilize, because in tackling a lot of the issues, sometimes it's a case that people, first, aren't aware of the issues, and second, just don't know what to do about them once that's happened.

So a lot of Combat Poverty's work would be focused on building the capacity of people who are experiencing poverty to contribute to the policy-making process, and then, on the other hand, working with government departments to support them in making necessary changes.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you.

I recall being in Ireland back in 1987, I think. Actually, I'd better be more sure than that because it was my honeymoon. It was 1987. I remember clearly it was 1987. And I remember that the economy was not doing particularly well at that point in time. I think you referenced that year.

I want to make one comment. There are a lot of aspects to battling poverty. One is a good economy. One is the Celtic Tiger. One is investing in education. One is tax reform.

But it's my understanding also that between 1997 and 2006, the basic rate of social welfare payment increased by 99.7%, well ahead of the 34.2% increase in the CPI and well ahead of the increase in gross average industrial earnings.

So it is all those things, but it is also in fact making a determined effort to say we're going to put some resources to this issue for those who are most vulnerable. Is that correct?

[Gerry Mangan]

That clearly demonstrates that one of the outcomes of the Celtic Tiger was that there were more resources to channel into support for those who are least well off.

An interesting dimension to that, and it's something that has created a lot of problems for us, is that the rate of relative poverty actually increased while all this was happening. This is based on incomes generally in the state, and they were rising at such a rate. There were more jobs; there were better-paid jobs. There was increasing female participation in the workforce; therefore, there were a lot more two-income households. There were reductions in tax levels, which was a key part of the economic policy, a way of keeping wages at a moderate level and compensating workers a bit through lowering taxes.

While all this was happening there was a general increase in income and significant improvements were made in social welfare, but despite that, the gap between the majority in terms of standard of living and the less well off was increasing, even though, overall, everybody's standard of living was improving.

So it's this type of problem or challenge that a strategic approach can address. First of all, you find out it's happening, then you find out why it's happening, and then you begin to tackle the causes of it. We've been trying to tackle it over the last nearly 10 years. We're beginning to do it in terms of not just keeping social welfare payments high, but also issues such as activation, getting people back to work, and removing barriers to employment--a whole range of areas like that. But it's how you tackle poverty in a complex, rapidly changing society. If you leave it to normal, individual policy areas, they won't be able to move on it as well as they will through a more strategic approach.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Savage.

We're now going to move to the Bloc for seven minutes.

Mr. Lessard.