Member's statement: Anti-poverty Strategy
Member's statement by Mr Colm Gildernew on .
- MLA
- Mr Colm Gildernew
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 8 September 2026
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Anti-poverty Strategy
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5673793
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I raise the ongoing failure to produce an anti-poverty strategy. The issue has been going on for a long time. At the first meeting of the Committee for Communities after the Assembly's restoration following the DUP's collapse of the institutions, I asked the Department about a timeline for bringing forward an anti-poverty strategy.
In February 2024, I was told that it would take a matter of weeks, given that Deirdre Hargey and the sector had completed a huge amount of work to pull together a range of proposals.
We did not, however, see a draft strategy produced or a consultation launched until mid-2025. At that time, the draft strategy was widely criticised by the sector for not having in it enough governance, timelines and targets and for many other reasons. The consultation closed almost a year ago, on 19 September 2025. There followed a period during which the Department wrote up its findings. The report was published in April 2026, and the Department acknowledged that it captured many of the responses that had fed into the original draft of the strategy and that the sector had identified as being crucial in order to have an effective strategy. The Department then told us that it was working on having another draft ready for us immediately following the summer recess. At that stage, we told the Department, "We won't wait for summer recess. We will meet again, if doing so facilitates earlier action on the issue". That meeting, however, did not take place over the summer, and we are still not aware of when the strategy will come forward. I have just attended an event that Trussell is hosting today in Parliament Buildings, which I am proud to have sponsored, asking MLAs to pledge to eradicate the need for food banks. I urge all MLAs to visit the event, which is taking place in room 115. At it, the Minister for Communities stated that he is now looking to have the strategy ready within the term. I have to say that that will be met with great disappointment by those who experience poverty and those who work in the field of alleviating poverty. Without an effective strategy, we cannot start the work of reversing the trajectory, which continues to rise in the North. I therefore urge the Department to act with all haste to finalise the work and bring forward an effective, robust strategy for dealing with poverty.
406 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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