Ireland has become a wealthy society yet we like to keep our poverty hidden, even from ourselves. Poverty is an embarrassment to wealth and so we are - or should be - embarrassed to find, as a recent UN report tells us, that 15.3 per cent of our population lives in poverty. Next to the US, we have the worst human poverty rate in the developed world.

A recent ESRI report gives a slightly different but nevertheless worrying picture. It tells us that consistent poverty has decreased from 15 to 10 per cent of the Republic's population. However, the percentage of people in households living in relative poverty is higher than it was.

It is a disgrace that we should have such poverty levels in this time of boom, but what is even more disgraceful and shocking is that the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs, Mr Dermot Ahern, tells us that this level of poverty is not a matter of any great embarrassment. This denial of the existence of poverty among us is the most shocking thing of all.

Not only do we hide our poverty but we also hide our wealth in case, presumably, we might be asked to share it. The UN report tells us that this State was the only country which was unable to give an estimate of wealth distribution.

Meanwhile, we are discovering the lack of regulation of financial institutions by successive governments. This has allowed this level of wealth-hiding to go on.

The view of ourselves in Ireland today, the message being carried by the media, is that we are doing fine, the economy is rocketing, unemployment is falling, we are achieving great things and as a country we are being looked up to by others.

Certainly we are doing well and that's great. Certainly unemployment is down (from 11.9 to 6.4 per cent, according to ESRI figures) and that's even better, but we should not allow ourselves to be deluded into thinking that this means poverty is a thing of the past in this State.

The fact is that there are families in our wealthy society - those described as living in consistent poverty - who are scraping by on a weekly pittance of £141.60 (for an unemployed couple with two children) or of £103.90 (for a one-parent family with two children). A person with a disability living alone is expected to live on £73.50 a week.

Our politicians are preparing themselves for an increase in their salary of £200 a week, which the Minister for Finance says they well deserve, and I'm sure they do. At the same time, they regard their suggestion of increasing the old age pension to £100 a week as extremely generous and appropriate.

How can they or we reconcile these huge differences?

Social welfare payments increased in this State by 1012 per cent between 1994 and 1997. This falls well behind the general 22 per cent growth in income during the same period. Unless social welfare payments are linked to average income growth, the gross inequalities between those at the bottom and the rest of us will never be erased - in fact, the gap will become wider.

Apart from the very low level of social welfare incomes, there is a range of disadvantage in this State which contributes to poverty.

Women, men and children in the low-income bracket experience a lack of pre-school facilities, sports facilities, creative facilities for children, young people and adults, and infrastructure.

We also have a big problem with young people dropping out of school early. Many of these people never get any training - they are too young for FAS courses and they are not encouraged to join early school-leavers' courses, of which there are not enough.

The result is that many of them drift in and out of low-paid, short-term, exploitative jobs. They end up becoming long-term unemployed because they are unskilled, inexperienced and unmotivated.

We have an appalling functional illiteracy rate (23 per cent, according to the UN report), which means that nearly a quarter of our population cannot deal with a bill or read the instructions on a medicine bottle.

Our population of homeless is steadily growing. We have problems with young people leaving home with no place to which they can go.

We have children with serious difficulties and great needs being sent to totally unsuitable places because there is nowhere else for them - in spite of our judiciary frequently calling for facilities in which to place them.

WE ALSO have a devastating drugs problem, with very few clinics capable of providing help for drug users. These things are true measures of how people in our country experience poverty in their everyday lives.

While some governmental provisions are good, others are totally inadequate, even appalling, for people of advancing age, for people with mental illness or for people suffering from physical or sensory disabilities.

It is well known our prisons are overcrowded and unsafe; merely building more prisons is not enough.

Successive governments have worked with the social partners to tackle disadvantage through a wide variety of projects and programmes, yet the problem of exclusion and marginalisation still remains acute, even more so now that we have such a high rate of economic development.

Ad hoc projects and programmes, tax cuts and small increases in social welfare are not enough to combat poverty and social exclusion.

The Government will have £5.5 billion to spend at the end of this year. This represents an unprecedented chance for the State to demonstrate to the world what it is to commit to a just and fair society.

We have the opportunity to lead with a programme for social reform which will go hand in hand with our economic programme. We have the chance to ensure that everyone benefits from our economic growth. We are well placed to wipe out forever illiteracy, poverty and disadvantage in all its guises - economic, social, environmental and cultural.

We are now well placed to influence the shape of future society.

The new millennium offers us the opportunity to put in place a social and economic policy for a modern, progressive State to which other countries will look - not only because it is economically strong but because it is a society with a soul, a society which is fair, which is just, which is peaceful.