MARTIN Donovan spends his days sprawled on the filthy linoleum that covers the floor of his caravan on the outskirts of Tallaght, Co Dublin.
The stench of stale urine is unmistakable. Martin sits here, surrounded by soiled bedclothes, and plays a tune called Christmas Eve on his battered tin whistle. The sun shines hopefully through makeshift curtains. Occasionally, he sips at his whiskey bottle and flicks away the flies.
Martin is 84 years of age and a member of the travelling community. His life and those of many of his peers remain untouched by the Midaslike paws of the Celtic Tiger.
He tells you he has just been released from St Loman's psychiatric hospital in Palmerstown. He suffers from chest pains and severe arthritis in both legs.
Andy Doogue of the St Vincent de Paul jokes with Martin, who despite his age and failing health returns the banter.
"Your roof is falling in, isn't it Martin?" he says, referring to the holes in the caravan ceiling.
"It's a hard oul' station," Martin says, and manages a smile.
Administrators in the St Vincent de Paul are currently negotiating with South Dublin County Council for funds to help Martin. "We are willing to put up £300 towards the cost of a new caravan but we can't be expected to pay it all," says Mr Doogue.
So far the local authorities have not indicated whether they will provide the £700 extra needed to purchase a new caravan. Meanwhile Martin sits in squalor, his trousers fastened with a piece of string.
Poverty of this nature is more readily associated with older people in urban areas. But different, less easily identified problems afflict the old in rural communities.
Mary Quinlan, a regional officer with the community development organisation Muintir Na Tire, says that in rural areas it is social, as opposed to financial, poverty that causes the greatest concern:
"It is the isolation that can cause problems. The infrastructure of these rural communities is being allowed to deteriorate. Access to health and social services has become increasingly difficult," she says.
In Camross, a small village at the foot of the Slieve Bloom mountains, 20 miles outside Portlaoise, Sadie Delaney, Lily Moore, Ann Matthews and Mick Dowling have congregated in the local GAA hall.
They run an over 60s club and are in the middle of organising a school reunion. When asked about problems encountered by the elderly in remote areas like Camross, they are reluctant to speak at first.
It was worse in the 1950s, says one. You should have seen the style at the Holy Communions yesterday, comments another. Deprivation? Isolation? Not here.
But as they talk a different picture emerges of life in a remote country village. These enthusiastic pensioners have their own stories to tell, but Laois pride means they dwell on the experience of others.
There was the woman in the village whose uncle took ill recently. She has to look after him despite being eight months pregnant and having 10 children already.
Another has spent her whole life looking after her mother, now 102, because if she was left alone, "sure she'd have nobody."
Mick talks about two brothers in their 80s who live on the mountain and have only recently been persuaded to avail of social welfare benefits.
More than a third of the 1,000 strong community have been identified as vulnerable. As the post offices, chemist shops and other services disappear from rural communities the sense of isolation is heightened.
There is a demand for personal alarms, says Mary Quinlan, a demand motivated more by a fear of crime than any actual occurrences. "But trying to find the money to purchase and maintain them is often difficult," she says.
A prominent authority on rural development, who declined to be named, says that the rapid demise of the rural community is a result of governments "not counting the social costs of economically driven decisions".
"Everything is motivated by financial fain. But what sort of a price do you put on the elderly, on the communities that are fading away?" he asks.
Says Hugh Frazer of the Combat Poverty Agency: "I have no doubt that poverty has not been made a priority. We are at a critical crossroads in our development.
"Either we invest in trying to break this cycle or we resign ourselves to the gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged widening."
There are more than half a million people over the age of 65 in this country. Despite this, older people are not being courted by the political parties, says Michael O'Halloran, administrator with the Irish Senior Citizens' National Parliament.
"Pensioners have made their contribution over many years to the development of the economy, many of them working for low pay and in bad working conditions," he says. The parliament this week called for State pension schemes to be set at a rate of 40 per cent of average industrial earnings.
"Unless issues concerning pensioners and other low income groups are tackled, then we have no right to call ourselves a caring society," he says.
"The Celtic Tiger must not be allowed to become the Celtic Piranha."