"How to banish poverty and exclusion - and create new wellbeing". That's the headline over an op-ed piece in today's Irish Times by Fr Seán Healy marking the 25th anniversary this year of Cori Justice. He notes how the country has changed in the past quarter century - "A country characterised by forced emigration has been transformed into a country requiring significant numbers of immigrants to maintain its economic development. The public finances have also been transformed and the Exchequer continues to collect far more in tax than it spends". Problems persist, notably "unacceptable inequality" in health and education, not to mention insufficient social housing, substantial adult illiteracy, high rates of early school-leaving, growing social exclusion and problems of racism and discrimination. Healy notes that the UN Human Development Report found that Ireland was 17th out of 18 selected high-income OECD countries in its human poverty index. This index is compiled by calculating life expectancy, adult literacy, long-term unemployment and risk of poverty.
One of the great strengths of Cori Justice - and for which Healy deserves enormous credit - is the consistent highlighting of such issues and the willingness to challenge government dismissal of their figures. Cori have realised that ethically grounded pleas for social justice will get nowhere without hard data. Cori have provided a wealth of analysis over the years and long may they continue to do so. Nobody on the left could argue against the policies that Healy advocates that would tackle poverty and exclusion. It's the usual list of measures to address infrastructural deficits, especially in the areas of public transport and social housing as well as appropriate levels of health care, education, caring and employment services. Healy also taps into the widespread feelings of insecurity evinced by by the relatively prosperous:
Growing incomes have not led directly to increased wellbeing for all those who are better-off. In fact, the growing competitiveness and individualism in society have made some people unhappy.
Hence the emphasis on feelings of "wellbeing". Healy is clear that there is a fundamental political choice to be made:
We must decide either to let the market (mainly or entirely) provide the required services and infrastructure, in which case some people simply will not benefit from these services because they can't afford them.Alternatively, we let the State provide these services and infrastructure (mainly or entirely) in which case we must acknowledge that our total tax-take is too low to meet the costs involved. It is not realistic to expect Ireland to have European-type social services with US tax levels. This is particularly the case when Government pays for most, if not all, of its capital investments from its current budget surplus.
But the words 'politics' and 'political' never appear in the article. Instead the matter is presented as a menu of policy options that "Ireland" could choose to take. Such a "new approach to social policy" as advocated by Healy would of course require "focused action". We will get no clue at all as to who or what will politically drive such policies.
Cori obviously has to perform something of a balancing act. As an influential and important element of the community and voluntary pillar of the Social Partnership process it, of necessity, has to depoliticise itself. Cori's success (and that of other groups often derisively dismissed as "the poverty lobby") as an advocacy organisation can be seen in the way the language of social inclusion is written into official policy discourse that emanates from all state and local government bodies. Everybody now pays lip service to social inclusion and anti-poverty strategies. The free market buccaneering ideologues may not like such rhetorical commitments but they have to live with it.
Cori do a fine job as advocates for a more radical social policy. What we will never get from Cori is a narrative of power and politics and an analysis of the constraints in terms of state power and social forces that are ranged against the realisation of their social agenda. That's how it should be. Cori are only a lobby group. A political strategy and agenda should come from a political party.
Comments