NI Executive urged to ‘take poverty seriously’

The House’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said the Department for Communities’ handling of the Child Poverty Strategy was a “catalogue of failures” in which children and families were not at the heart of the strategy.

The scathing report on “shortcomings” has been published and makes 11 recommendations to tackle child poverty.

The strategy was first developed in my First Minister and Deputy First Minister’s office and subsequently passed on to the DfC.

It ran from 2016 to 2022, and no similar plan has been implemented since its conclusion.

The PAC’s report said that during implementation the strategy was inadequately targeted, underfunded and had “unacceptably weak” regulations for accountability.

The PAC said the child poverty rate has risen steadily from 20 per cent to 24 per cent in 2022-23, and DFC “seems a long way away” from children and families experiencing poverty.

To talk Thursday’s Good Morning Ulster programChairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Daniel McCrossan, said: “Make no mistake about this, we will be calling those responsible for implementing this strategy back before our committee to ensure the recommendations are delivered.”

McCrossan called the evidence hearings held by the PAC “absolutely shocking” and said the department was “not involved in any race on this issue.”

“Ministers and the executive said it was important to them, but we haven’t actually seen any action,” he added.

He asked the DfC to confirm that a new anti-poverty strategy will be presented to the Executive by the end of March.

The Public Accounts Committee evaluated the following in its report: Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) report on child poverty It was published in March.

Number of children living in poverty in Northern Ireland It showed a significant increase in 2022.

They noted that approximately 109,000 children, or 24%, live in relative poverty, compared to 19% in 2021.

Sheena McMullen from Action for Children NI told the programme: “We are already paying the price for poverty in so many ways”.

He described the “funding constraints” justification for not implementing the child poverty strategy as unfair.

“The audit office found that child poverty costs us £1bn a year,” he said.

“Poverty is the root of many of our policy dilemmas, leading to demands on healthcare, educational services, justice and social care settings.”

Ms McMullen said the report “comes at a good time” and the executive office now “needs to show us that they are taking this seriously”.

A Department for Communities spokesman said: “The Department welcomes the PAC’s interest in this important issue and will fully consider the Committee’s recommendations.”

There are two main measures of low income used by the government. Income is counted as the money a household must spend after housing costs are taken into account.

Absolute poverty measures how many people cannot meet a set standard of living this year. The Department for Work and Pensions currently defines this by the standard of living an average income could buy in the year ending March 2011. If your income is 40% below this, after adjusting for prices that have increased since then, you would be classed as living in absolute poverty.

Relative poverty is the number of people whose income is 40% below today’s average income.

An individual is considered to be in relative poverty if they live in a household with an income below 60% of the typical UK income.

This is a measure of whether those in the lowest-income households are keeping pace with income growth in the population as a whole.