David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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Question 467: To ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the breakdown of the poverty rates for each county here; the number of children who are at risk of poverty or living in consistent poverty for same; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10622/06]

Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)
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The main data on poverty levels in Ireland are derived from the annual EU survey on income and living conditions, EU-SILC. Results for the second year of the survey, 2004, were published by the Central Statistics Office, CSO, on 12 December 2005. The survey results do not break down poverty rates by county, as the survey sample size is too small. The survey does, however, provide a regional breakdown, by Border, midlands and western region and by southern and eastern region, as defined in the nomenclature of territorial units, NUTS 2, classification used by EUROSTAT. The results, broken down by gender and by age group, are provided in the following table 1.

When EU-SILC results for 2005 are available the CSO will be examining the possibility of providing a further breakdown of the data by each of the eight regional authorities established under local government legislation. This breakdown would correspond to the EUROSTAT NUTS 3 classification.

The report, Mapping Poverty: National, Regional and County Patterns, published last year by the Combat Poverty Agency, does provide some data by local authority area.

The report states that sampling factors limit the extent to which the data can be reliably broken down by county and concludes that, while it might be possible to do this, "it would not be sensible to do so because of the wide margin of error associated with the figures". The breakdown of poverty data by local authority area is provided in the following table 2. This data is not fully comparable with the data provided under the EU-SILC survey because of survey differences relating to such issues as how income and consistent poverty are measured.

An analysis of the Combat Poverty Agency report shows disparities in the incidence of poverty risk by local authority area, with the highest incidence being recorded in the Border and western regions. Exploring the reasons for such spatial variations, the report found little evidence of a causal relationship between poverty and location per se. It found rather that the main factors determining poverty relate to the socio-economic composition of households, which in turn were influenced by structural factors such as lack of education, low-paid work, unemployment or non-participation in the labour force.

The higher percentage levels of poverty in certain regions are also in part explained by the lower proportions of those who are well off in those regions, compared to other mainly urban regions. This is due mainly to the availability of more higher paid jobs in urban regions and currently to a younger working population. The differing levels of house prices between regions are another indicator of these phenomena.

The differences in the incidence of poverty between regional and local areas highlights the need for a more regional and local focus in the context of the national action plan against poverty and social exclusion. This focus should result in a more effective use of resources and better outcomes overall. I welcome the fact that social inclusion plans have already been developed by some local authorities, with more in the process of being developed. The local development social inclusion programme is another important element in the development of this approach.

Building on the progress already made in this regard, it is my intention that a strong regional and local focus will be a major feature of the next national action plan for 2006 to 2008 due for issue in September next.

The source of this data was the CSO 2005. The figure marked with a "^" was based on 60% median income after social transfers. The figure given as an asterisk had a sample occurrence which was too small for estimation.

The data in this table are extracted from tables 4.3 and 4.4 of the Combat Poverty Agency, CPA, report, Mapping Poverty: National, Regional and County Patterns, whose data source is the Irish National Survey of Housing Quality 2001 to 2002. It should be noted that as the measures of "at risk of poverty" and consistent poverty used in the CPA report are not the same as the equivalent measures used in EU-SILC reporting, and in order to avoid confusion between the two, the figures for each local authority in the table are presented in terms of ratios of the national average figure for these measures.