The Workers Party has written to the Communities Minister Deirdre Hargey , rebuking her and her department for the use of the phrase ‘food insecurity’ . 

The Party’s South Belfast spokesperson, Patrick Lynn, said “…it is obscene, highly insulting and extremely derisory to attempt to disguise one of our greatest social problems with a meaningless verbal smoke-screen”.

“What the Minister should have said, but tried instead to camouflage, was that there is a food poverty crisis in Northern Ireland, that it is directly effecting the lives of thousands of children and that it’s happening on her watch”. Patrick said

“It’s Food Poverty. No one should be attempting to run away from that or to cover it up with corporate-speak”, he said

“The reality is”, said Patrick, “that more than 79,000 emergency food parcels were distributed to people facing crisis in Northern Ireland between April 2020 and March 2021, including 31,000 for children”. 

“That Minister, is Food Poverty. At least have the decency to call it as it is”, Patrick concluded.