Mr. Philip O'Connor:

I thank the Chairman and committee members for their attention. The European Anti-Poverty Network, EAPN, is a European-wide alliance of organisations in member states, which focuses on European policy and its impact on poverty levels and so forth. We welcome very much this belated communication from the Commission to strengthen the social dimension of EMU. Ireland's stance since the 1970s has been that economic and social progress are two sides of the same coin as regards the development of the European project and economic progress should not be regarded purely as an end in itself but as a vehicle to improve living standards and create a more inclusive society. It is also obvious and patent that the EU cannot continue to be a competitive economic bloc if a quarter of its population is suffering deprivation or excluded from the basic services of society.

These are fundamental values not just of groups such as ours, but also of national policy. What is still in place, although it has taken a battering over the past few years, is the policy developed by the National Economic and Social Council, NESC, in 2005, The Developmental Welfare State, which set out a balanced approach to developing the type of welfare state this country should have. A balanced approach was also the aim of the Lisbon strategy and it is also written into the current Europe 2020 strategy while it was reiterated in the recent communication on the social investment package The values of social cohesion and so forth form a central part of the Structural Fund regulations, which will govern the use of such funds in Ireland for the next six years. The Irish EU Presidency adopted and argued for the social clause in the Lisbon treaty, as proposed by the EAPN. This requires the EU to take equal account of the impact of social exclusion on all aspects of policy at Union level.

We remember during the accession debates in the 1970s and again at the time of the creation of EMU in the early 1990s it was all about balancing economic conversion with social cohesion across Europe and with regional balance through Structural Funds. These have always been aims of Irish policy and we need to see them knitted into this latest - possibly final - stage of EMU.

During the years of the crisis we have seen a rise of consistent and relative poverty across Europe despite the aim of Europe 2020 to reduce it by 20 million people. The EU fiscal compact contains various measures to ensure economic and fiscal convergence, or at least a partial convergence in the fiscal area. While we welcome the latest communication in principle, it lacks an ambitious agenda for restoring the balance between economic and social objectives in achieving European integration.

The indicators are very restrictive in focusing on the labour market. Professor Callan referred to the restriction to those of working age in measuring exclusion and poverty. That needs to be expanded to incorporate areas such as child poverty, which are major concerns of social policy.

With the six pack and the emergence of macroeconomic surveillance of budgets at European level, this should include a stronger set of guidelines on convergence of social policy. Although it is not being implemented, in theory Ireland has poverty-impact assessment of various Government and budgetary strategies. We would like to see that knitted in as an indicator.

I wish to focus on the area of active inclusion which was adopted as a recommendation by the EU in 2007, building on an earlier principle position taken in the early 1990s. It combines the ideas of income support, inclusive labour markets through active measures to support people into work rather than a punitive approach and access to quality services. As Professor Callan has said, access to services is totally missing from the communications. Perhaps this committee could raise that issue in an effort to strengthen those aspects.

In addition to the indicators, we should also have guidelines on what should be a common minimum income approach across Europe. It is not possible to legislate for a common approach to minimum income owing to the amount of national decision-making retained in that area. As we have seen with the employment strategy and so forth, we certainly could have agreement across Europe on developing a set of principles and criteria around social policy in member states and particularly with regard to minimum-income schemes. We keep emphasising minimum-income schemes as the major way to tackle threats of poverty and social exclusion.

The communication pays little attention to in-work poverty. It seems to believe that once work has been achieved, the problems of social exclusion have been resolved. Of course we all know that in-work poverty is a growing area of exclusion across Europe. I re-emphasise the point that the document focuses purely on working-age payments, which disregards factors such as child poverty.

We support the principle that is retained in this communication of maintaining a system of social dialogue and the development of social market economy as a fundamental principle of European convergence. However, we notice there is a restriction in the definition of social dialogue to the social partners in the narrow and traditional sense of governments, employers and trade unions. This country has a strong record of having widened the social dialogue to include some other groups and we urge the committee to take note of that aspect. Those are EAPN's main points about the communication. In general we support it, but we would like to see a shift of emphasis in those directions.