Abstract

As part of its role as a national community development centre, the Combat Poverty Agency provides information, advice, training and resource materials for the community and voluntary sector. Under the current Strategic Plan 2005-07 Combat Poverty initiated the Having Your Say Programme www.combatpoverty.ie/havingyoursay that aims to strengthen the policy voices and practices of communities experiencing poverty. One of the four Programme objectives is to: • Initiate and support work that enables people experiencing poverty, their representatives or organisations that support them to engage in the policy system. Economics and Poverty - the links was commissioned, by Combat Poverty, Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed and the National Women’s Council, under this objective. The overall aim of the title is, in an Irish context, to increase the understanding and policy analysis capacity of anti-poverty community and voluntary organizations on the relationship between poverty and economics. Its objectives are: • to increase knowledge and understanding of the relationship between policy or social objectives and economic activity • to increase knowledge and understanding of fundamental economic concepts • to increase knowledge and understanding of the role of government and market systems in the allocation of resources • to increase knowledge and understanding of economic policy instruments relevant to poverty • to enhance skills and capacities to critique and analyse economic and fiscal policies as they apply to the allocation of income, wealth and resources • to enhance skills and capacities to critique and analyse economic and fiscal policies as they relate to the redistribution of income, wealth and resources.