The thousands of people being laid off across the country must not be allowed to continue in joblessness and become poor in the long term, poverty campaigner Sr Stanislaus Kennedy has urged. Speaking at a conference in Killarney, she called on the leaders of business, trade unions, educators, community organisations and the Churches to try to prevent jobs being lost in the first place and, failing that, to retrain the people losing them.
"We must take steps now to prevent the newly unemployed from becoming long-term unemployed, with the risk of poverty that comes from that," she warned.
Each of the 120,000 people who were made unemployed within the past year represented an individual case of personal and family hardship, she pointed out.
Sr Kennedy said she recognised that the government was facing a severe budgetary situation necessitating tough decisions but warned that the approach being taken could condemn many of today’s generation of children to long-term disadvantage and poverty.
"Cutting access to school books for our very poorest children, for example, is an appalling response to economic problems, and an indication that government thinking about education is badly skewed," she argued.
And reducing resources in primary schools would, she claimed “have sad consequences for our society not just in terms of a less literate and capable workforce into the future, but in terms of our commitment to equality of opportunity for all of our children."
Meanwhile, increased unemployment and poverty levels among parents will, she continued, militate against the prospects of children reaching their potential
"The cuts to primary school resources could mean that Ireland’s children will pay a severe and disproportionate price for the current downturn," Sr Kennedy said bluntly.
And she went on to warn that many of the people who lose jobs and fall into poverty now will not automatically recover their when the economy picks up.
She said that even before the recession, an estimated eleven per cent of children lived in poverty and those who grow up in particular parts of the main cities are “already burdened with disadvantages they might never be able to overcome, no matter how intelligent, hard-working or gifted they are".
"Children from the most vulnerable families, including children from poor families, traveller children and the children of immigrants, whether or not they live in officially designated disadvantaged areas, need access to books, special support and small classes” she pointed out.
"But the way our society works is that the children from better-off families, those who can afford to pay fees and extra tuition, get these supports, not the children who most need them”.
"Today, as I see more and more people joining the dole queues, I know that more and more adults and children are moving into consistent poverty, which means that families do not have enough."
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(Source: CIN)