Groups representing elderly people have raised concerns over what the likely bailout package might mean for them and warned today they would protest against any cut to their pensions.
Members of the so-called "grey army", whose demonstrations two years ago forcing the Government to drop plans to means-test a medical allowance, said they should not be penalised under a possible external aid package prompted years of reckless bank lending.
"I've seen bad times in the 50s and 80s but I've never seen anything like the despair now, and it's not just pensioners," said Nick Corish (86) at a meeting organised by charity Age Action Ireland to discuss the next austerity budget.
The Government says it does not need an emergency assistance programme from the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund but it is in talks with the EU Commission and the IMF about measures to stabilise its state-guaranteed banks.
"The majority of us pensioners are trying to live on the state pension... They are already at the edge of poverty or living in poverty," Mr Cornish said.
The basic state pension is €115.20 a week, rising to €230 for those who made maximum contributions.
"I've lived through four recessions and this is going to be the mother and father of them all," said one pensioner.
At the meeting, politicans and businessmen were labelled "sleazy men" and "gangsters" who have brought the country to its knees, and some called for those responsible to be jailed.
Some sounded resigned to Brussels and the IMF supervising the State's public finances.
"It may have gone out of our hands, but maybe those in power have made such a mess, maybe it's better," said Padraig Heeran, a former teacher, aged 82.
The pensioners' lack of faith in the Government is part of a wider disillusionment that is likely to spur political change next year.
The spectacle of some 15,000 pensioners on the streets in late 2008, some in wheelchairs, protesting against a possible means testing of their medical allowances, frightened ministers into a retreat.
Partly as a result, the Government is expected to ring-fence the state pension in the next round of cuts.
But May Toal said she wasn't taking any chances.
"I feel that we're not making ourselves visible...we've gone underground," she said. "We won the day (before) and we can again."
Reuters