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.