The Irish National Anti Poverty
Strategy (NAPS), at the time of its inception and since, has been presented as
an example of innovative public policy delivery, both in terms of the policy
output it produced but also in terms of the policy process from which it
emerged. This chapter focuses on the second of these and seeks to explore
what the NAPS experience can tell us about the evolution of governance
mechanisms in Ireland. In particular the paper seeks the role of civil society
within these governance patterns through a study of the evolution of the NAPS
and related processes at both the national and local levels.