Deprivation levels have increased by 50 per cent in some local areas

A POVERTY report published this week found that Cappaghmore, Rowlagh, Dunawley, Moorfield, Jobstown, Kiltipper, Fettercairn and Killinarden are areas with “extreme disadvantage”.

Titled ‘Disadvantage, Poverty and Deprivation Levels in South Dublin County’, the report was compiled by a community network called the Rights Platform.

It found that deprivation levels in Cappaghmore, Foxdene, Jobstown and Glenshane had increased by 50 per cent from 2016 to 2022 and were the most disadvantaged areas in the report.

The report noted that a quarter of people in Cappaghmore and Foxdene were unemployed, while a third of people in Glenshane and Jobstown were unemployed.

“Claims that we have near full employment in Ireland need to be more circumspect,” according to the report.

“Full employment is a deceptive term,” it was stated elsewhere in the report.

“It does not apply in many of the poor areas in South Dublin: unemployment rates vary from 23 per cent to almost 33 per cent.”

Overall, the study found that the people who most experience poverty in South Dublin County are people with disabilities and long-term illnesses at 27.3 per cent.

This is followed by households of one person under 65-years-old at 27.1 per cent, the unemployed at 25.5 per cent, and single-parent households with children under 18 at 19.2 per cent.

Across South Dublin County, the average lone-parent household rate is 53.9 per cent, compared to the national of average of 10.1 percent.

The report concluded that “cost-of-living increases cut across every strata of society, but [the] impact on those existing on [the] bare minimum is very severe.”

The report also criticised “no urgency of response” to the high levels of poverty in the locality and said that national averages measuring poverty “conceal huge pockets of poverty”.

The figures compiled in the report were sourced from Census 2022, the High Deprivation Index, and the Study of Income and Living Conditions 2023.