Editorial

Plans at the macro-level, such as the recently launched National Action Plan on Poverty and Social Exclusion, share one inestimable credit: they provide a snapshot of a given situation from which to work and an objective towards which to strive. Between the first and the second there lies a gulf that has to be spanned.

The plan is ambitious and comprehensive. It makes it all the more regrettable to hear from Family and Social Solidarity Minister Dolores Cristina that there were organisations that failed to answer the detailed questionnaire that had been sent to them.

Few will disagree with the priorities it has set. It is essential to reduce the early school-leaver share of youth unemployment by 10 per cent by 2010. It is even more necessary to crack down on school absenteeism, which must be a major contributor to an illiteracy rate that exceeds 10 per cent.

Nobody will disagree with the aim to increase the employment of persons with disability to four-fifths of the national employment rate. And few will cavil with any attempt to increase female employment but we must ask whether the rate of unemployment among women takes into account the many hundreds employed as domestics.

The entire nation will applaud any measure that tackles the heartbreak - and the physical fractures - suffered by victims of domestic violence. It also expects the stiffest penalties imposed on mothers, or fathers, who place their children in situations such as the spine-curdling one of a daughter subjected to the sight of her mother indulging in sex with two men (a father and his son!), forced to participate with the son and all the while her own father ignoring the depravity in order to lead a peaceful life!

The National Action Plan on Poverty and Social Exclusion highlights various areas that require a great deal of energetic attention if our society is to move ahead as a cohesive whole. What needs to be emphasised, of course, is not only that societies everywhere, to a greater or lesser degree, are faced with similar problems but also that the work demanded of governments and societies is never-ending. The fight against poverty, whether real or at risk and social exclusion, is perennial.

Some figures quoted in the plan sound baffling - 29 per cent of persons in rented housing were more at risk of poverty than the home owners' average. And what does the phrase "at risk of poverty" mean in financial terms?

Either way, it is in everybody's interest that the struggle is conducted in earnest (victory will, almost by definition, never be complete). Improving levels of literacy and education, which are not the same thing, investing in new skills that are demanded by a 21st century economy, cutting down on unemployment by creating more investment opportunities, promoting against great odds so many values that are under assault - the Church cannot do this on its own but there is no doubt it is a major player; these are some of the weapons that have to be wielded.

Another substantial weapon is one not likely to be used - a bipartisan approach to a social problem that it is manifestly in the national interest to tackle. More than the national interest, there is the interest of those the plan wishes to help that is at stake. Dare we hope that the opposition will recognise this?