`By the time you've got through it, by the time it's over, your mind is just a blank. What was it all for? There's no point in denying it - it breaks your heart not to be able to give the kids things, even everyday things." Christmas, says Catherine "is really just pot luck".

With four children, and £158 a week to live on, the 37-year-old deserted wife and mother finds herself spiralling into an ever-increasing dread, from mid-September on.

"You just have the kids settled into school and they're talking about it. By this time [mid-December] it's sheer panic," she nods, breathing deeply on the cigarette held tightly between her index and middle fingers. Dressed in jeans, a pink cotton-knit sweater and light green pump-runners, her rich brown shoulder-length hair, as she puts it "in need of a bit of a wash and a tidy", this diminutive woman appears surprisingly young for the life she has thus far lead.

Speaking with her in the small living room of her Corporation house, in Dublin's Sallynoggin, it is difficult not to think that had she had the encouragement, the opportunities and the dividends this vibrant economy purports to offer its people, she would have been quite beautiful. Her pale features might have been accentuated less by the thin anxiety-betraying creases about her eyes, her mouth and her forehead.

Catherine's husband left her in 1983. She was 22, living in a council flat in Dun Laoghaire, with three small boys aged between three-and six. (She has had a daughter, Megan, since then.)

"My anger kept me going," she says.

"I'd be queuing every week at the social with kids hanging out of me. There were times when I was so depressed it was indescribable. It was a friend of mine who asked the St Vincent de Paul to come and see me they were my lifeline. I still couldn't do it without them."

Life is better than it was then. In 1983 she coped on £74 a week. Three years ago she took on a part-time cleaning job which brings in £50 a week, on top of her £108.10 a week entitlements. She collects her deserted wife's benefit and children's allowance on Wednesday, and cashes her wages cheque on Friday. Between the two lies a finely balanced array of outgoings.

"On the Wednesday I pay the bills - the ones I can. I pay £23 rent, about a tenner on the gas, £6.50 a week on coal, £10 on the ESB, £11 on the television rental, £1015 a week on the phone. And my biggest bill is my two loans men. I try and pay them £54 a week. That leaves me with about £35 for the shopping.

"Shopping for five on that is very difficult. Food is the most important thing, so if I'm running low I put one of the bills off. The bills will be there still when I die.

"I'm not always looking for special offers but my eyes would be caught by them. I'd have friends now who buy the cheapie brands, but I think they're not as good quality. I'm quite a choosy poor person," she laughs.

She says she buys a four-stone sack of potatoes for between £5 and £7.50 every two weeks, and "a bit of meat, maybe some corned beef or a chicken, for Sunday. "Sunday is the only day we always have meat. We might have a few chops during the week. David (her youngest son, aged 18) was saying a few nights ago `You should get these chops more often'. I says to him, `And we will, when you get out and get earning'.

"Megan is often wants special things like the yoghurts in the colourful pots and I try to get them for her, but she's good. She understands when I say `Look, I just can't afford it this week'.

THE family eat potatoes almost every night, she says, with perhaps pizza, maybe some sausages. "I never really make anything different like spaghetti bolognaise because I find they're hungry an hour after. I have to think of what's going to keep them full, what's going to keep them away from the fridge for hours. In the morning there's cereals and lunch - well, there's always a bit of bread there for them."

She agrees that yes, she gets bored with life, feels there's nothing to look forward to.

"I work to keep the wolf away from the door. I could never afford a weekend away. I never had a holiday until I went on a trip to Lourdes which the Vincent de Paul arranged last year.

"There are no luxuries, and that's hard on the kids. Megan was mad keen to go and see Boyzone last year, but I didn't check the prices of the tickets. I knew I couldn't afford it. That's hard, not being able to give the kids what you think they should be able to take for granted.

"I'd rarely buy a newspaper, though I try to get books for the kids in second-hand shops, but they're dear.

When asked if she gets out herself she says she's never been out for a meal.

"I might go out on a Saturday night for a few drinks but even at that I'd wait until about ten o'clock, so I could get away with just having the one or two. And even at that I'd have to give up some small thing during the week to have the few pounds. I might have a few friends 'round here, but they'd bring their own drinks."

Megan, she is determined, will stay on at school to sit her Leaving Certificate. Her 19-year-old son, David, has just sat his Junior Cert, and he is hoping to become a chef. Catherine herself left school when she was 14 - "the sorriest decision I ever made".

"The saying `Educate a mother and you educate the family' is so true," she comments. "The thing I have found everywhere, from hospital receptionists to social workers, to almost anyone is that they talk down to you when you're poor. They look at you and think, `You're poor, you don't have an education, you don't need to know anything.' You can't fight them without an education."

As for life now things aren't as bad as they were when she was terrified to even go outside the door for fear of meeting someone I owed money to. I wake up each morning though, and it is a grind. I dread to think what I'd do if I lost my job.

"I haven't really got any plans for the future. There are things I would like to do," her mouth softening into a slight smile. "The only way out I see is going back to education. I kind of fancy myself working in an office rather than cleaning it, but it's not realistic. "There's no way I can give up the £50 a week, and who's going to pay for the bus fares, the books, my lunch? I'm looking forward, I suppose, to some kind of miracle."

Some of the names of people in this article have been changed