The new Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Mr Brennan, will face the demands of 30 lobby groups at a four-hour pre-budget forum today.
Among the groups making their pitches at a resource centre in Dublin will be Barnardos, the Irish Senior Citizens Parliament, the Society of St Vincent de Paul, the Forum of People with Disabilities and Pavee Point.
Though invited "to make submissions and submit views and proposals on social welfare changes and improvements which they would like to see included in the budget", the views of most will already be well known to Department officials.
They will be framing their estimates for 2005 within constraints imposed by the Social Partnership arrangement and the Department of Finance.
The forum, however, will give various lobby groups an opportunity to air their demands before the new Minister in the hope of influencing him towards their viewpoints.
All will demand the Government do more to ensure its own National Anti-Poverty Strategy (NAPS) targets are met.
One of the first organisations up will be Age Action Ireland, which is looking for pension increases of between €13.35 and €16.65 a week to "help close the gap" between average wage increases of 109 per cent between 1991 and 2001 and welfare increases of 72 per cent.
Among the demands from the Irish Countrywomen's Association is that the means test for the carers allowance by ended.
