The failure by politicians to tackle child poverty in the north is a “dereliction of duty”, campaigners have said as protestors highlighted the issue at Stormont.
MLAs joined third third-sector organisations including Save the Children at the protest at Parliament Buildings on Monday morning, which called for more to be done on alleviating child poverty.
The gathering was held ahead of an assembly motion on the issue by Alliance MLA Sian Mulholland, and upcoming legal action being taken against the executive over a failure to adopt an anti-poverty strategy.
A report by the Northern Ireland Audit Office last year estimated that child poverty in the north cost the public purse between £825 million and £1 billion per year.
It found one-in-five children in Northern Ireland were living in relative poverty.
Protestors demanded the urgent publishing of an anti-poverty strategy amid warnings that Northern Ireland was falling behind the rest of the UK in dealing with child poverty.
Peter Bryson, of Save the Children NI, said that in Great Britain the ending of child poverty was a “political priority”.
“In Northern Ireland the draft Programme for Government didn’t mention child poverty, let alone prioritise it,” he said.
“The lack of any strategy around this in recent years, at a time when child poverty has worsened for the most marginalised communities, has been a dereliction of duty.
“The Anti-Poverty Strategy is a chance to correct course, show children they matter and set out the concrete steps that we can all work towards to make that a reality.”
The motion by Sian Mulholland, an Alliance MLA for North Antrim, called for the Assembly to express “grave alarm” over a 90% increase in emergency food parcels distributed by Trussell food banks to children in Northern Ireland over the past five years.
She told the chamber: “What frightens me more is that individuals mask their poverty, making the true scale of need almost impossible to measure. Those people remain on the periphery, ashamed to seek help, and fall deeper into poverty as a result.”
Belfast-based rights organisation, the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), is taking the legal challenge over the Executive’s failure to adopt an anti-poverty strategy, which it says is a legal obligation under the St Andrew’s Agreement.
It will be heard at the High Court in Belfast on Friday.
The CAJ took a similar judicial review against the Executive in 2015, with a High Court judge ruling in favour of the organisation.
The drafting of an anti-poverty strategy was also a commitment under the 2020 New Decade, New Approach deal to restore Stormont.
