Press Releases
Speech made by Ms Emily Logan, Ombudsman for Children RI, to the Forum on Child Poverty, Tuesday 6th December 2005
Good Morning. I am delighted to be here and I welcome the opportunity to contribute my views as Ombudsman for Children to the child poverty debate.
I would like to begin by telling you a little bit about my Office, our role and how we are trying to make a difference to the lives of all children living in the Republic of Ireland by providing an independent voice for children and young people. You will hear shortly from Nigel Williams, the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People about the work he is doing in Northern Ireland.
I have the honour of being the first Ombudsman for Children in the Republic. It is an enormous privilege and an enormous challenge. The two most significant things to say about the creation of the office and my appointment are probably the fact that I report directly to the Oireachtas and that young people were centrally involved in the recruitment process.
The Ombudsman for Children?s Office has two key functions. Firstly, we have the power to investigate complaints into how services for young people under 18 are provided by public bodies, schools and voluntary hospitals. The key condition for my intervention is that the child has or may have been negatively affected by the action or indeed the inaction of the public sector. Complaints can be made by children, young people and adults on their behalf. To date, 14% of calls to our Office have come directly from young people.
The second, perhaps more wide-reaching, function of the Office is the promotion of children?s rights. The Ombudsman for Children Act states that the Office should use the UN Convention as a tool for promoting children?s rights. In 1989 the United Nations Assembly adopted the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a unique document in terms of international consensus on how children should be treated and respected. Ireland signed up to the Convention in 1992.
Our Office fulfills its mandate of promoting children?s rights in several ways. Young people are not just philosophically at the centre of our work, we involve them on a regular basis. It is my view that young people are experts of their own experiences and to ensure that I accurately represent young people, I meet and hear from them first hand about their lives and the things that are important to them.
As Ombudsman for Children, I can and do provide advice to Government. I regularly meet Government Ministers to inform them of the unique information we have collected through our direct work with young people, our complaints function and our own research, ensuring that our work promoting rights is based on good evidence.
My staff and I endeavor to do our very best to make sure that children and young people are treated with the dignity and respect that we as adults take for granted.
We are particularly interested in hearing and representing the voices of those children in society who often do not have their voices heard - children living in detention centres, children living in care, children without families and, of course those living in poverty.
So in a country like ours, why is poverty awareness so important?
We now have the youngest population in Europe and with children being more at risk than adults of poverty we also have one of the highest rates of child poverty with 148,000 children living in consistent poverty; this represents 14.6% of all children living in Ireland. Children do not have a vote and therefore remain politically vulnerable and continue to be at greater risk than adults of poverty.
[Consistent poverty is when an individual experiences relative income poverty and an enforced lack of one or more items on a basic deprivation index, such as a lack of heating or not being able to pay everyday household expenses without falling into debt.]
[Almost one quarter of children and young people under 18 in the Republic of Ireland live in ?relatively poor? homes where household income is below 60% of the ?median equivalised? household income in Ireland. This means that 242,000 (23.9%) of children in the State live in homes with incomes significantly below the average income level.]
There is a huge number of large and small organizations made up of dedicated people in Ireland that have been working for many years to end child poverty. Some of them have worked directly with families and children providing financial and other supports. Others, such as the Combat Poverty Agency have undertaken research aimed at enhancing our understanding of poverty so that we can come up with more effective ways of dealing with the problem.
I know that there are people here today who work tirelessly to eradicate poverty for children and families. I admire and support your work. You, above all others know of the vast efforts made to date, and you, above all others are keenly aware of how much more needs to be done to ensure that everybody on this island has an acceptable standard of living. As the person charged by the Irish State with the role of promoting children?s rights and welfare, I very much welcome the work of the End Child Poverty Coalition and the Barnardos' End Child Poverty Campaign. Such initiatives are crucial in raising awareness about child poverty and focusing our minds on the task at hand.
As a relatively new organisation, I ask myself what can we at the Ombudsman for Children?s Office do to bring added value to efforts already underway to tackle poverty. I think that we have an important and distinct role to play.
My Office operates under a statutory mandate set out in the Ombudsman for Children Act, 2002. I will use the powers available to me to promote the rights and welfare of all children in Ireland in the most effective ways possible.
A human rights-based approach will underpin the activities of my Office. I will take, as the basis for our work, the rights set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the European Convention on Human Rights (which can now be pleaded before Irish courts) and in the Constitution and Acts of the Oireachtas.
I believe in using a human rights-based approach; identifying the ?rights? issue at the core of any problem and working to make sure that that right is respected. In practice, it means measuring what we see against international human rights instruments to which Ireland is a party.
One of the ways to tackle child poverty is to promote the realisation of children?s economic, social and cultural rights.
These rights include the right to:
? social security;
? an adequate standard of living;
? the highest attainable standard of health; and
? the right of disabled children to special care.
Where there is child poverty, often many of these rights are denied.
While states must immediately respect civil and political rights they are under a lesser obligation to ?progressively realise? economic, social and cultural rights. This distinction has made it difficult for individuals to insist on respect for their economic, social and cultural right in Courts or in disputes with local authorities or health authorities. Many families who have come to our office cannot influence decisions being made which have a direct impact on their lives, e.g. amenities or services they would like as opposed to what decision makers believe they should have.
When it comes to considering complaints sent to our Office, our Act provides that we must establish if a child has been adversely affected by an action before conducting an investigation. In deciding whether a child has been adversely affected, we will consider the rights of that child, including their economic, social and cultural rights and whether these rights may have been denied. Where appropriate, I will use the investigatory powers at my disposal to seek to ensure respect for the realisation of the economic, social and cultural rights of all children.
Poverty persists where economic, social and cultural rights are denied. In our research and policy work, we will work to keep in check the adequacy of legislation, policy and practice and advocate in favour of additional or new measures which may be required to keep children out of poverty.
I will also work to highlight issues relating to the rights and welfare of children that are of concern to children, including at international level. Speaking of which, Ireland recently submitted a report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Ireland. This report will be examined by the UN Committee in September next year. I, too, will get an opportunity to submit an independent report to the UN Committee and will ensure that the main issues of concern with regard to the protection of children?s rights in Ireland are brought to the Committee?s attention.
I will also work to highlight issues relating to the rights and welfare of children that are of concern to children, including at international level. Ireland recently submitted a report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Ireland. This report will be examined by the UN Committee in September next year. I, too, will be submitting a report to the UN Committee and will bring issues of concern to their attention. *The Children?s Rights Alliance is also submitting a report to the UN Committee. Together, we will ensure that the main issues of concern with regard to the protection of children?s rights in Ireland are brought to the Committee?s attention.
So with so many children still living in poverty perhaps the significant question to ask is ?whose responsibility is it to eliminate poverty?? or ?who should help poor people get out of poverty?? The answer, of course is all of us! Some people would say that it is primarily the responsibility of the poor to get themselves out of poverty and the whole investment led market economy preaches this notion that everyone has opportunities and if they work hard, they can escape poverty. Those who have worked hard and who have dragged themselves out of poverty would strongly promote this view.
There are structural causes of poverty and these are not simple to eliminate. It is complex and entrenched. So poor people who have been marginalised and excluded since childhood, have in-built disadvantages in their situations and find it hard to break the cycle of poverty. It is more difficult for them to bear all of the responsibility for getting out of poverty. Now if we apply that to children and child poverty, we can see that it is even more difficult for children to take responsibility to break out of their existing situation.
We as part of wider society, all have a role to play in ensuring that no child should suffer unnecessarily. We can stop taking our new found wealth for granted and become conscious that not everyone lives in the Ireland of the Celtic Tiger. We can remember that many people; many children have never felt the benefits of our economic success. We can encourage our Government, legislators and public representatives to turn the aspiration goal of ending child poverty into reality.
On a much simpler level, awareness is the foundation for attitude and hopefully behaviour change. In our daily lives we can treat everybody; adults, children and young people with dignity and respect. Once we, as a society, stop tolerating injustice, there will no longer be room for injustice and poverty, like all other forms of injustice will cease to exist. Human dignity requires respect for human rights of all including children; there can be no higher priority than the right to live with dignity.