The Review of the National Anti-Poverty Strategy has been undertaken in accordance with the commitment given in the PPF. That agreement was to update the Strategy in consultation with the social partners, to review the underlying methodology, review and revise the existing targets where appropriate and consider new targets in the areas of child poverty, women’s poverty, health, older people and housing/accommodation.

The PPF also provided that the analysis would be updated to include emerging causes of poverty e.g. racism. Furthermore, the EU Commission has asked each Member State to prepare a national action plan against poverty and social exclusion (NAPincl), for the period 2001-2003. The Government submitted its plan in June 2001. The NAPincl has focussed on a number of themes that are relevant to NAPS. The NAPS and NAPincl processes will now merge and future plans submitted to the European Union will be consistent with the revised NAPS.