Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Members may have read the Social Justice Ireland report today on the poverty figures. It makes for quite frightening reading, when one looks at the spike in poverty levels in recent years and sees that today more than 750,000 people in a country of 4 million live below the poverty line.

We must ask ourselves what is the poverty line. It is important to realise that the poverty line is set at 60% of the median income. The median income is not the typical average of industrial wages. It is the middle level of income of the entire society. Sixty per cent of the median income represents, at 2016 levels, €209 a week. If one is earning below that amount, one is officially in poverty. We should also note from the report that one in five children officially lives in poverty. It scares the life out of me when I hear somebody, such as the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, talking about making work pay because it is code for going after social welfare. Instead of lifting people out of poverty, we have driven them further into poverty over recent years.

Being able to afford a new pair of shoes once a year or having a hot meal daily are examples of how we can measure the real human suffering that goes on. We all know of old people who make choices in the winter between heat and eat. We also know that young people are being really penalised in this society. When they had more than €100 taken off their social welfare payments during the recession, it was never re-established. Young people are really suffering and are living €30 per week below the poverty line. We are hitting the young, the elderly and lone parents and we are doing nothing, according to the Government's plans for the future, to reinstate this.

Social Justice Ireland has done us all a justice by pointing the finger, fairly and squarely, at the inequality in Ireland. It is outrageous.

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