Anti-poverty strategy could 'go further' says first minister

A draft anti-poverty strategy agreed by the Northern Ireland Executive could probably "go further", the first minister has said.

But Michelle O'Neill said there was no "row" between Sinn Féin and their devolved government partners the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) over the contents of the document.

An anti-poverty strategy was first committed to 18 years ago with the aim of reducing social exclusion and deprivation.

In March, Stormont's Executive Committee was found by a court ruling to be in breach of its legal obligation to adopt the strategy.

Asked if there had been any tensions over the draft strategy, which was agreed on Thursday, O'Neill responded: "Everything doesn't need to be painted as a row.

"Is there differences of approach at times? Yes. On this issue, do I think it could go further? Probably yes, but let's work that out through consultation."

The Sinn Féin deputy leader added: "We have a chance to discuss it even more and then it'll come back to the executive and then we'll hopefully have another discussion around how we can improve it, if we can improve it."

Communities Minister Gordon Lyons, who submitted a draft paper to ministers for consideration about six weeks ago, said it has "drawn heavily on the work that has already been carried out".

The DUP minister succeeded Sinn Féín's Deirdre Hargey in the role when Stormont was restored in 2024 after a two-year hiatus.

Speaking on Thursday, he said the draft strategy had been "updated to reflect the circumstances that we find ourselves in".

"But I certainly reject any notion that we have not gone forward with many of the suggestions that were in the previous document," he added.

"We have all been working together to get something that works."

Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly described the executive meeting on Thursday as "very constructive".

The DUP minister added: "The draft anti-poverty strategy will address the real-life impacts of poverty.

"It will ensure that we can prioritise actions and funding in the right way, at the right time, to the right people to help those who need it most."

The strategy had to be signed off by ministers before it can go out for public consultation.

It will then return to the executive for any final changes to be considered before Stormont departments can begin to implement it.

Recent figures from the Department for Communities (DfC) suggest about 22% of children in Northern Ireland are growing up in poverty.

The figures also indicate that about 23% of children are in relative poverty and about 20% are in absolute poverty.

The anti-poverty strategy is a requirement inserted into the Northern Ireland Act, following the St Andrews Agreement in 2006.

There have been multiple court orders and legal challenges made as no strategy has ever been implemented in Northern Ireland.

In January, judgment was reserved in a recent legal challenge brought against Stormont for "failing to adopt" an anti-poverty strategy for Northern Ireland.

Two months later at the High Court in Belfast, Stormont's Executive Committee was found in breach of its legal obligation to adopt a strategy.

Trása Canavan from Barnados and a member of the Anti-Poverty Strategy Group said: "Unfortunately we haven't had any sight of this document."

"We haven't had any engagement with, either as individual organisations or as the anti-poverty strategy group, the minister or his officials on the development of the draft strategy," she told BBC Radio Ulster's Good Morning Ulster programme.

"You know this group did a huge amount of work throughout the course of the 2021, 2022 and subsequent years to input into a co-design process and then develop our own paper recommendations, which was nearly 100 pages.

"So there is a huge amount of work that has gone on and that we shared with the department.

"We really hoped that would have informed the draft but I can't tell you what's in it because we haven't been engaged in the process of the development of this paper."

There are two main measurements of low income used by the government, absolute poverty and relative poverty.

Income is counted as the money a household has to spend after housing costs are taken into account.

Absolute poverty measures how many people this year cannot afford a set standard of living.

The Department for Work and Pensions at Westminster currently defines it based on the living standard an average income could buy in the year ending in March 2011.

If your income is 40% below this, after adjusting for rising prices since then, you are classed as living in absolute poverty.

Relative poverty is the number of people whose income is 40% below the average income today.

An individual is considered to be in relative poverty if they are living in a household with an income below 60% of the typical UK income.

This is a measure of whether those in the lowest income households are keeping pace with the growth of incomes in the population as a whole.

There is no UK-wide anti-poverty strategy, but after Labour took power in the last general election Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer launched a ministerial taskforce to begin work on an anti-poverty strategy, specifically targeting child poverty.

In lieu of a government strategy, some local authorities in England have developed their own anti-poverty plans to tackle the issues.

In Wales, an updated Child Poverty Strategy was introduced by the devolved government last year.

In that strategy there are five main objectives to eradicating poverty, including reducing costs to maximise family incomes, creating pathways out of poverty and challenging stigmas surrounding poverty.

The Child Poverty Act was introduced in Scotland in 2017, with legal targets to ensured that less than 10% of children are in relative poverty and less than 5% are in absolute poverty by 2030.

In the Republic of Ireland, initiatives to tackle poverty and social exclusion have been in place since 1997.