6 Sept. 07
Up to 80% of children in west Belfast's most deprived areas are living in poverty, an academic has claimed.
Eilish Rooney from the University of Ulster said poor Catholics and Protestants were missing out on Northern Ireland's peace payoff.
She told the West Belfast Festival those living in parts of the Falls and Shankill experienced severe hardship.
She criticised official equality bodies for not doing enough. "The data shows that workless Protestant households are closing the gap with their Catholic counterparts," she said. "This means that there is a levelling - but it is a levelling downwards."
Giving the Frank Cahill Memorial lecture at Conway Mill off the Falls Road, she said: "In the area we are in, 80% of the children live in poverty in eight of the constituency's 17 electoral areas."
She said it was also shocking that the Equality Commission had not carried out a study of women's poverty in Northern Ireland.
"Whilst all the focus of the equality debate has been on Catholic and Protestant male unemployment differentials, no study has examined the over-time impact on women and children of these differentials," she said. "The commissions for human rights and equality are there to provide guidance on all of this which is why it is all the more worrying when these bodies appear to fail in their vital functions."
Burden of Debt
A research report, published in 2005 by the Save the Children charity, found that approximately 150,000 children in Northern Ireland, 37% of children aged under 17 in the province, live in poverty.
Eight per cent of them, about 32,000 children, live in what the report describes as "severe poverty".
It says "worryingly high" proportions of severely poor children are going without basic necessities such as three meals a day, fresh fruit and vegetables at least once a day, or new clothes when needed.
Many of their parents are burdened with debt and money problems. The report found that one in four severely poor children live in homes where electricity bills are paid late.
What do you think on this report. Do you agree with Eilish Rooney? How can the situation be improved?
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For more information on this topic try these websites: -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/6934176.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,,2143496,00.html
