In the Seanad on 23 March 2000, I said:

The Bill represents a genuine effort to share the benefits of the present economic boom more widely and to prevent the constant widening of the gap in our society between the haves and the have nots. 

The point I wish to make is based on a slogan, which I think was used by Oxfam in relation to Africa, which said, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for life".

The measures in the Bill and its recent predecessors are, for the most part, short term. They address the symptoms of the problem but not the solution. The more fundamental, long-term measures which are aimed at removing the causes of the problem seem to get a lower priority in Government spending.

It reminds me of how readily we dig into our pockets when there is a crisis around the world, such as in Mozambique, Biafra and Ethiopia. Ireland has a marvellous record in that regard. We respond readily and make an effort to solve the problem there and then. 

However, no matter how valuable such actions are, they do not get to the kernel of the problem. We also help in that regard, but it takes much more time and money to address that aspect. This returns to the question of giving a man a fish rather than teaching him how to fish.

A broad analogy can be made in this regard with the way we address the question of disadvantage. We have an immediate problem. There are poor people in Ireland who must be helped as generously as possible. We seem to have made good progress in recent years in doing something about that. The Bill is another stepping stone along that route. 

However, we are less energetic, generous and ready to commit ourselves when it comes to addressing the long-term causes of deprivation.

Part of the reason we do not address it is that it is a much bigger problem than the short-term one and is much more expensive and difficult to solve. The much greater amounts needed are very daunting for a State which traditionally has had to count every penny in this area. 

I understand the Minister's inability to solve everything. However, we must find a way to get to the root of it.

Another part of the reason we do not address the causes is that we are not quite sure how to do it. 

It is very easy to give money to the poor. That is simple and works in an immediate way. However, it is much less easy to address the cause of disadvantage. I am as responsible as others for using the existence of pilot schemes as an excuse to say we are doing something about it. Some schemes have been very useful but others have failed to produce any discernible results. The upshot is that we do not know how to address the problem of disadvantage with any great degree of certainty.

I will concentrate on two aspects of disadvantage. 

Before I joined this House I was a member of the Finglas Area Partnership, one of the very first area partnerships set up at the end of the 1980s. As a Senator I had to step down from it. I rarely regret that Members of the Oireachtas are not allowed to sit on State boards, it does not present me with any problem, but I was reluctant to step down from that one because I really believed that we could have played a larger part. 

At the end of the 1980s the problem was unemployment. It soon became clear that the short-term initiatives, although necessary, would not solve it. The problem now is not unemployment but disadvantage and those black spot areas with high, in some cases almost 100%, unemployment. A broad-brush approach is not the solution to these problems, we will have to find it in another form.

One of the efforts we made in the Finglas Area Partnership and made by other partnerships was community building and the other was education. These are the two vital issues today. 

The problems we have are worse in many ways but, fundamentally, the issues are the very same. Even with our Celtic tiger economy, there are areas with 100% unemployment. How will we solve that? We must address those areas of community building and education with whatever it takes. 

It will take a great deal to achieve it but if we write off whole communities we do so at our peril. We must find a solution which involves self-help rather than just giving the money to get people out of this week's challenge.

In the area of education, I was fortunate to work for five years chairing the NCCA with the Department of Education on the applied leaving certificate. Those five years were very useful because they taught me a great deal. 

Education is the one way to escape disadvantage. Many years ago Donogh O'Malley set up the free education system to ensure equality of opportunity, but that will not achieve everything. That will not include these people who are being left out.

Currently, the target for second level education is that 90% of pupils will complete their leaving certificate. I was always unhappy that it left out one person in ten who was not going to receive second level education. The figure being achieved is much less than that - one person in five is not getting second level education.

We must work not just on equality of education but on equality of outcome. We must do whatever it takes to ensure that every young person of the age of 18 has the maximum number of opportunities before him or her according to their own talents and abilities. 

We will never have total equality of adults but we must put more work into that area. Currently, what often determines one's future is the status of one's parents and, equally important, the community in which one lives. The education and community influences are probably linked and there is probably a way of solving problems with them. 

There is a vast difference between offering equality of access to education and achieving equality of outcome. There is a big difference between the two, conceptually and in terms of expense. Therefore, I can understand why the Government is unable to do any more than just grapple with it.

The other part of the problem is that it is so big that we tend to run away from it. Throwing money at the task in the hope that it will keep a lid on the problem will not solve it. We will have to do more at the fundamental level of the problem.

I praise without reserve most of the contents of the Bill but we need not just more but a different approach. 

We need to give more importance to the long term, we need to focus on removing the causes of disadvantage and we need to remove the causes of deprivation. We must accept that this is the biggest challenge society will face in this century.

I welcome the Bill and the efforts being made by the Minister but we are only tinkering with matters until we start taking a long-term rather than a short-term view.