Representatives of 26 anti-poverty and equality organisations staged a mass walkout from a meeting of the Partnership for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF) in Dublin Castle yesterday.
The groups, which constitute the Community Platform, said they were frustrated that they had not been consulted about several recent Government decisions which had serious implications for their members.
This lack of consultation was making a mockery of their contribution to the PPF, they said. The Platform includes the Forum of People with Disabilities, the Irish Refugee Council, Women's Aid and Simon Communities.
Yesterday's PPF plenary session was the last before the general election. The Platform said it would be ensuring that these concerns became election issues in every constituency. They challenged all election candidates to say where they stood on equality and rights issues and on the role of social partnership.
Speaking after the walkout, Mr Donal Toolan, a Community Platform spokesman, said the groups were not walking out of the partnership process but had laid down a marker that this lack of consultation could not continue.
He pointed to the criminalisation of trespassers, the deportation of asylum-seekers with Irish-born children and the referral of equal status legislation to the Liquor Licensing Commission as examples of the Government's disregard for consultation with all concerned groups.
A Government spokeswoman said the groups had had plenty of opportunities to discuss concerns with the Government, but walking out of a plenary session was not the way to do it.
Ms Orla O'Connor, National Women's Council policy analyst, said the Government was making decisions which were inconsistent with the social partnership process.
"While we sit in one set of rooms and negotiate with the Government and their representatives on the issues of inequality and poverty, at the same time in other rooms decisions are being made and deals are being done to undermine our contribution," she said.
The rights of Travellers and people with disabilities had been completely undermined by Government legislation, she said.
The Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed pointed to recent cuts in the Community Employment (CE) scheme as an example of the lack of commitment to social partnership.
