Beggs welcomes Save The Children Child Poverty Report
Wednesday, May 16th, 2007
Welcoming Save the Children’s publication of its Annual Child Poverty Report, Ulster Unionist Children and Family Spokesperson Roy Beggs Jnr MLA, has urged the new Executive to get on target for the UK’s 2020 goal of eradicating child poverty.
Mr. Beggs said,
“It is a social and moral scandal that 44,000 children in Northern Ireland are living in severe poverty. Communities across Northern Ireland want and deserve better for all our children. As a society we all lose out when children are abandoned to poverty - we all lose when children are denied educational opportunities or suffer from health inequalities.
“If we are to be a fair and just society, Northern Ireland must be fully signed up - in word and deed - to the UK-wide target of eradicating child poverty by 2020.
“On behalf of the UUP, I thank Save the Children both for its ongoing work on child poverty and for this Report in particular. It sets down a challenge for Government, statutory agencies, voluntary and faith-based organisations, and local communities - the challenge to lift children out of poverty and to give them the opportunities we all want for out children”.