Member's statement: Anti-poverty Strategy

Member's statement by Ms Sian Mulholland on 17 September 2024.

MLA

Ms Sian Mulholland

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

17 September 2024

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Anti-poverty Strategy

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4536801

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Today, on International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, I want to address the desperate lack of an anti-poverty strategy in Northern Ireland. Despite the urgent need, we still have no clear plan to tackle poverty, especially child poverty. I am tired of hearing vague promises, such as, "We are progressing at pace", or "Actively considering the development and delivery of the strategy". They are just words on a page. For us, it is about real people who are struggling to make ends meet, children who are going to school hungry and families who are living with anxiety because of poverty. Our failure to prioritise a comprehensive poverty strategy in the Programme for Government sends a devastating message to the 24% of children and 18% of working-age adults who currently live in relative poverty. The absence of a dedicated anti-poverty strategy is a glaring failure to address the needs of those who need our support most. The previous child poverty strategy ended in May 2022, and, since then, we have seen a significant rise in child poverty. In 2022-23, 24% of children lived in relative poverty, and that was up from 18% the year before. Those are not just numbers; they represent thousands of children in our communities who are going without the basic necessities of life. The Northern Ireland Audit Office's report on child poverty highlighted that the annual cost is estimated to be between £825 million and £1 billion per year. It is not just a financial burden; it is a human crisis. Children who live in poverty are four times more likely to develop mental health issues by the age of 11, setting them up for a lifetime of disadvantage. Without a strategy in place, we are failing our children, and the consequences will only snowball as they grow older. We need to ask ourselves this: what will it cost to do nothing? That should be at the forefront, underpinning every policy decision that we make. One of the most urgent issues driving poverty in our community is the five-week wait for universal credit. It is not just a bureaucratic hiccup; it actively pushes people deeper into hardship. Imagine losing your job, leaving a difficult or abusive relationship or becoming unwell, only to hear that you have to wait more than a month for any financial support. The wait is devastating, and it forces people into debt, leaves them dependent on food banks and even drives some into the hands of paramilitaries for loans. It is more than a delay: it is a flawed design that throws families into crisis. The challenges keep coming. In six months, the welfare mitigations that so many rely on, such as the benefit cap, are set to end, leaving families exposed to the harshest realities of welfare reforms.

Without those protections, many families will face drastic cuts to their income. I want the Executive and the Department for Communities to act decisively now. We urgently need a comprehensive and multidimensional poverty strategy that prioritises our children, supports our working families and commits to reducing the staggering human and financial costs of poverty in Northern Ireland.

524 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:06 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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