‘Political will’ needed to tackle poverty in Tyrone

AREAS of Tyrone have some of the worst poverty rates in the North, according a new report.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that the Derry City and Strabane District Council area has the highest poverty rate (22 per-cent) of all local authorities in the years from 2017 to 2020. For the same period, Fermanagh and Omagh District Council had a poverty rate of 21 per-cent.

A larger gap emerges when looking at rates in other local authority areas, with Mid Ulster at the lower end at 14 per-cent.

The report’s authors wrote, “The varying poverty rates in different areas are driven in part by the trends in rates of employment and economic inactivity.

“Fermanagh and Omagh (65% in employment), Derry City and Strabane (68%), Causeway Coast and Glens (68%) and Belfast City (68%) had among the lowest proportions of its working-age people in employment and among the highest poverty rates in Northern Ireland.

“Lisburn and Castlereagh (81% in employment), Mid Ulster (75%) and Ards and North Down (73%) had higher proportions of working-age people in employment and comparatively lower rates of poverty.”

The Derry City and Strabane and Fermanagh and Omagh districts also have some of the highest child poverty rates in the North at 26 per-cent and 25 per-cent, respectively.

Commenting on the report, Omagh councillor Barry McElduff said, “There needs to be a dedicated, inter-departmental strategy for addressing poverty in Tyrone and Fermanagh.

“We need more quality, well-paid jobs to be created. We need to reduce the wage gap between areas west of the Bann and areas east of the Bann. We need to achieve real regional economic balance.”

He described raising educational attainment levels as “crucial” to tackling poverty as well as improving access to healthcare to tackle health inequality.

Cllr McElduff added, “All of this work requires a genuine commitment and political will at the highest level.”

The North as a whole has lower poverty rates than other UK nations thanks in part to lower housing costs, the report found, but the authors described the position as “fragile” due to a higher proportion of people who are “economically inactive” and relying on benefits.

Poverty rates also fall along religious lines, according to the report. The authors found that those who identified as having no religion had a poverty rate of 22 per-cent compared to 20 per-cent who identified as ‘other’ and a rate of 19 per-cent for Catholic people. The lowest rate was for protestant people in the North at 12 per-cent.

The author’s noted “this is reflected in the geography of poverty in Northern Ireland” with the predominantly Catholic areas having higher poverty rates than those with a higher protestant population.

The report author’s added, “While the cost of living in Northern Ireland is, on average, lower than elsewhere in the UK, with correspondingly lower than average incomes the huge rises in energy bills coupled with the wider increase in inflation will be keenly felt by people on low incomes.