The current National Action Plan for Social Inclusion 2007-2016 represents Ireland’s blueprint for tackling poverty and inequality and promoting social inclusion. The action plan has been developed in the context of the new social partnership agreement, Towards 2016.

A ten-year National Anti-Poverty Strategy was initially developed in Ireland in 1997. At that time, the Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH) worked with the Department of Health and Children (DOHC) to develop targets and mechanisms to reduce health inequalities, as detailed in the Report of the Working Group on the National Anti-Poverty Strategy and Health (2001).

These targets feature in national health policy in Quality and Fairness: A Health System for You (2001). Specific strategies to improve the health of disadvantaged groups such as Travellers and the homeless have also been developed by the Department of Health and Children . Health inequalities form a core component of national level strategies to address obesity and breastfeeding. A Strategy for Cancer Control in Ireland now includes a commitment to monitor inequalities in cancer.

The Health Service Executive manages the delivery of health and personal social services. The HSE has committed to addressing health inequalities within its national service plans.

IPH contributed views to the HSE National Intercultural Health Strategy, published in February 2008.

In 2005, IPH contributed to a review of Ireland's health inequality targets and the findings are outlined in Target Setting to Reduce Health Inequalities and Poverty: Lessons for the Future.

Lifetime Opportunities is the government's anti-poverty and social inclusion strategy for Northern Ireland. This strategy arose from an evaluation of the previous New Targeting Social Need (TSN) policy. Lifetime Opportunities sets specific goals to:

• eliminate poverty and social exclusion;
• tackle area-based deprivation and rural poverty
• tackle inequality in the labour market;
• address conflict and community division;
• combat health inequalities;
• help people break out of cycles of deprivation at different stages of the lifecycle from early years to retirement.

Targets and mechanisms to reduce health inequalities are set out in the policy documents Investing for Health (2002) and A Healthier Future (2005).