The Programme for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF) is not the last word on anything. Even if its commitments are honoured and all its proposals implemented to the full many problems will still have to be addressed in society and in the economy.

If it is ratified and implemented, and the central economic forecast on which it is based proves to be accurate, the year 2003 will not see a new Utopian reality emerge. Income poverty will not have been eliminated, inequalities will have increased, the gap between the poor and the better off will have widened in monetary terms and many opportunities for tackling social exclusion and inequality will have been missed.

If this is the case, why should the PPF be supported? There are three central reasons:

1. More will be achieved using this approach than any other on offer at present;

2. The agreement contains the potential for a far greater impact on poverty, inequality and social exclusion than seems to be generally appreciated; and

3. This agreement addresses a range of long-term issues such as sustainability, the understanding and measurement of progress and the development of a rights-based approach on many issues. These need to be addressed but have been ignored, in practice, in most other arenas to date.

If the social partnership process that produced the PPF was not in place what would the alternative look like? It would not be some perfect Utopia. Rather would it be a free-for-all situation in which various sectors would be competing with one another for the resources available for distribution. If such a free-for-all were to emerge, the political environment would be very different and could produce a very different set of outcomes.

In this competitive process far more unequal outcomes would result. I worked for more than a decade in Africa. The Africans with whom I worked have a saying that comes to mind in this situation: "when elephants fight it's the grass that is trampled."

Such an alternative approach would most likely mean that issues that have attained a major status in the PPF, such as social inclusion, quality of life and social cohesion, would not receive the same attention. Some issues the PPF commits to addressing, even if not as comprehensively as one would wish, would be likely to disappear off the agenda in the changed political environment.

While the social partnership process does not deliver as much as it should or could, it does deliver more than any alternative process currently available to those of us seeking to build a society where poverty, inequality and social exclusion have been tackled effectively.

The agreement has great potential within itself. The community and voluntary pillar of social partners made great efforts during the negotiations to have an "escalator" introduced into the PPF. This was aimed at addressing a major weakness in previous agreements, i.e., that no provision had been made for allocation of the substantial economic growth beyond the central forecast on which the agreements were based.

The PPF recognises this reality and acknowledges that it needs to be addressed. An "escalator clause" has been included. This is a first and it commits these additional resources to be allocated "in a balanced way to accelerate progress towards the priority objectives of this programme, including social inclusion".

In practice, this means that if economic growth exceeds the central forecast provided to the negotiators by the Department of Finance the additional resources can be used, for example, to speed up the process of moving all people out of income poverty.

Will this happen? Most economic commentators are forecasting economic growth far in excess of the 5.6 per cent per annum on which the PPF is based. Consequently, resources are likely to be available. Given the Taoiseach's blunt commitment at the recent Fianna Fail ardfheis to the elimination of poverty, all that is required is an honest follow-through on this commitment.

It can go far beyond the poverty issue, of course. Many other dimensions of social exclusion and inequality could be addressed with these additional resources. The development of poverty-proofing and equality-proofing of all Government policies will provide a basis for making best practice decisions in this context.

THE new escalator mechanism within the PPF is a powerful tool in building on and expanding the achievements of the agreement. It should be welcomed as such and its implementation needs to be monitored closely.

For years, many organisations and groups have lobbied successive governments to give greater priority to sustainability in its economic, social and environmental aspects. There has been some discussion on the need for ensuring that policies being pursued by Government in a range of fields were sustainable in the longer term.

Likewise, there has been an ongoing debate on what constitutes progress. The need for a new and broader range of indicators to measure a more comprehensive understanding of progress has been advocated but with little in the way of concrete results to show for all the advocacy.

The PPF contains commitments to substantial movement on each of these issues. National satellite accounts will be developed. Eco-auditing of Government policies will be undertaken. New progress indicators will be developed. Initiatives will be developed at local as well as national level.

The National Economic and Social Council (NESC) will develop a framework to bring into operation national progress indicators to measure economic, social and environmental development. This framework will encompass the availability and use of new forms of data, including national satellite accounts.

This is a very welcome development. For the first time in Ireland, a concerted effort will be made to agree a set of national progress indicators. These can include the value of unpaid work, the cost of environmental damage, the cost of resource consumption and a variety of other important measures that help to give a more rounded picture.

It is important to recognise what the PPF has achieved. £1.5 billion will be added to the Budget to tackle social exclusion. A wide range of issues that would otherwise be ignored is now on the agenda. The agreement is structured in a dynamic way with frameworks to be worked through in the years ahead rather than the traditional approach of confining the agreement to a set of commitments. An escalator has been built into the agreement to ensure that additional growth over the next three years will be used to meet the programme's priorities. The poorest people in Irish society will benefit and fewer people will be poor in the year 2003.

It is also important to recognise what the PPF has not achieved. It will not eliminate poverty. The relative income poverty line of 50 per cent of average income, adjusted for family size and composition, has not been recognised. Whether social welfare rates are to be linked to 50 per cent of average income and raised in line with these incomes has been left to a working group to consider.

Other major issues on the equality agenda will remain to be addressed. There is no guarantee that the childcare issue will have been resolved.

The challenge now facing society is to ensure that its growing resources will be used in a way that benefits everyone, not just the better off. The social partnership process that produced the PPF is only one arena in which these issues can be argued and decided upon. It delivers more than its alternatives could hope to offer. It still leaves a great deal to be done, but the PPF provides a framework within which this work can be progressed.

Dr Sean Healy is director of the justice commission of Cori (the Conference of Religious in Ireland) and participated in the negotiations that led to PPF.