About 40,000 Irish families are living in serious and crippling poverty. The forthcoming Budget is an opportunity to do something about this. Kitty Holland hears what life's like for those who go without
Ann Pepper doesn't eat a dinner during the week. "I tell my children I had a dinner during the day so they don't ask me why I'm not having one, so I can make sure they don't go without. Last night, I opened a tin of beans - had half that with a piece of bread and a cup of tea."
Ann, whose childhood polio flared up so badly six years ago that she has been left in a wheelchair, lives in Killinarden in west Tallaght, Co Dublin, with her 13 and 22-year-old sons. Though her older son works as an apprentice electrician and has an income of €84 a week, she says she wouldn't take anything off him. "He has to clothe himself and get his own lunches, and petrol, insurance and tax for his moped out of that, and he works very hard."
Sitting in the Killinarden Resource Centre, she explains that she is no longer with her husband. She has four other adult children who have moved out of the home and have their own financial struggles.
So, she looks after the needs of herself and of her youngest son, Dean, as best she can with €135.60 a week - her €118.80 a week disability benefit and a €16.80 weekly child dependent allowance. She also gets €117.60 per month in child benefit, giving her an average monthly income of €660.
"I pay €20 a week for gas, €20 for electricity, rent is €26 a week. Then I have to get oil for the heating and €5 a week for stamps for the TV licence," she says. "I had to get the phone and the Cablelink disconnected because I couldn't afford them." Her weekly shopping trip to Dunnes Stores for groceries is a "build up of temper, knowing there'll be things I'd like to be able to buy, things I can't buy.
"The things I always buy? I buy four loaves of bread - Dunnes own bread is the cheapest. It's 59 cent a loaf. I buy a pound of butter, sugar and tea. I always buy a tray of sausages - the cheapest. I scan for the cheapest before I look at the brands - though not with cereals. I buy good cereals for their breakfasts and try to change the variety each week. Otherwise, after a few weeks of one kind, halfway through they'll get bored and want a different kind. I can't afford to let half a box of cereal go to waste," she says. Asked whether she has breakfast she shakes her head: "A cigarette and a cup of tea. I probably have some biscuits and tea during the day if I'm here at the centre".
She cooks maybe sausages and beans, nuggets and chips, potatoes and chicken-burgers for her sons' dinner - rarely red meat and never fish which "has gone as dear as meat". So too have fruit and vegetables. "If I get much vegetables or fruit something else will have to be put back."
Her other big outgoing is clothes for Dean who, despite her best efforts, has on occasion come home upset from school because he has been slagged and bullied for "not having the top gear".
"He's in second year and it's very difficult. He does get depressed. It's got to the stage where he has mitched from school. At that age they have to have the right runners, right jacket, even down to the right cap. I bought him runners at the start of school for €90. They didn't last four weeks.
"It's not so bad as it could be as he has the uniform," and she recounts to the last cent how much each item cost. She missed one bill the week she bought the uniform, to buy him one pair of trousers (€35), one shirt (€7.99) and one jumper (€25). All are washed halfway through each week, ready for the second half.
Asked how often she buys herself clothes she says "almost never". "My daughter is very good. She buys me clothes for birthdays and at Christmas."
She has not owned a coat since 1999. "I wear a fleece over a fleece instead. I've looked at coats, but the cheapest you can get one is €100, and I would not spend that on myself."
Dean, she says, is aware of how things are, financially, for his mother, though she tries to shield him from it. The most difficult moments are when he tells her about things his friends are doing, or have.
"I get €16.80 for him a week - to clothe and feed him," she says angrily. "Some kids get that for pocket money. Dean gets no pocket money. If he asks can he go to the pictures with his friends I'll root and see if I can give him the money. If my other son is in I'll ask can he lend me some. But you'd need €10 to go to the pictures. I'd say he gets to go once, maybe twice a year.
"One day there last week he came home very down and I'd have loved to have said to him: 'C'mon, we'll go out for a cup of tea. But I hadn't a cent. I couldn't even bring him out for a cup of tea."
She herself "almost never" goes out socially and says if it wasn't for the Centre she doesn't think she would have any social outlet.
She went on holidays last year, on a pilgrimage to Lourdes organised by the disability charity, CASA. All her expenses were taken care of. She also does voluntary work with a summer camp for children and she "saved every penny" so Dean could take part in it for a month this year.
Asked about Christmas she gets upset. Lifting her spectacles away from her eyes to wipe them she says: "I want to get Dean nice clothes." She has been buying bits towards this end over the past few months. "I have a jumper, two pairs of socks and a pair of boxer shorts. But I have to get him footwear. I have to get him a coat.
"He would love to get a bike. He has it picked out in the Argos catalogue. It's a mountain bike with suspension or something - navy and yellow and €170. I know the page and the serial number. I know because he looks at it every day." He had wanted a Playstation but at about €270 for the basic console she says it was out of the question. Asked if she will be able to afford the bike she sighs: "I don't think so".
Margaret Reilly, a neighbour in Killinarden, chooses not to think about Christmas. She lives with her husband. Both in their 50s, they live on €224 per week. Her husband, who worked as a labourer for Dublin Corporation, has been unable to work for more than 10 years due to a heart condition.
Her regular outgoings, including rent, phone, electricity and gas, come to €119. As for Ann, a trip to the supermarket is a carefully controlled exercise in denying herself and her husband any luxury - "no biscuits or cakes", red meat, fruit and vegetables are rationed and fish is almost always avoided.
"It's very embarrassing having to put things back because you haven't the money to afford them," she says. "If I want to do a roast on Sunday it means one day during the week you don't have a chop." There have been evenings when she has had to tell her husband that there's nothing for dinner.
But she's "lucky", she says. "He's very easy going. He'd always say, 'Sure isn't there a bit of bread and a packet of soup?' He always tells me when I'm going to do the shopping, to get a packet of soup - just to have it as back up."
Like Ann, Margaret has adult children, and grandchildren. They call around and she tries to have biscuits for them. "But I know I can't give them things the other nannas give them. Their fridges are full of goodies for them. It doesn't make you feel very good. 'Inadequate' is a word I'd use."
Asked whether things have improved or not over the past five years, Ann says things seem worse, though Margaret feels they are much the same - "you just learn to adapt because it seems impossible to make them better".
"I did inquire about a cleaning job," she says. "I would get €200 every two weeks. But my husband would lose some of his benefit, so the financial situation wouldn't improve. He can't get out and about so I may as well keep him company."
These women exemplify lives presented in research by the Combat Poverty Agency earlier this month. The Against All Odds report studied 30 families whose average weekly income was €124 per adult and €50 per child. Described as "very poor", the families "carefully controlled" every cent.
"The needs of children in particular were put first," said co-author, Prof Mary Daly, of Queen's University, Belfast, "with spending for personal purposes generally vetoed". The report describes the pressures children in such families are under, including the "pressure to fit in with peers and a fear of being different".
"Children knew that parents made sacrifices on their behalf and this provoked feelings of guilt amongst some of them," the report states.
It says the main welfare payments are "too low for families to manage to live adequately in today's society" and emphasises "the need to move towards meeting the Government's target minimum social welfare rate of €150 per week".
Ann says she would love the Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy, to try struggling, for just one week, like she does every week, all year.
Asked whether she thinks the Government realises how tough life is for people like her, she says: "I don't think they can believe it. I think they think it's not as bad as it is. It's mental torture".
Combat Poverty says it is difficult to say how many families are living in the kind of poverty experienced by those of Ann and Margaret, though given the fact that child dependent allowance is paid to the "poorest families" one can infer that at least 40,000 families are living like this. The Society of St Vincent de Paul this week urged McCreevy to show he is "really attacking child poverty" in the Budget this Wednesday by increasing the lowest social welfare payment to €130 per week and child dependent allowance to €25 per week.
Margaret says she would "just like to feel we were getting something". "Even when we do get a bit of rise everything else goes up - the ESB, the rent."
Ann says she gets depressed thinking about the future. "I cry in bed and in the shower - I can't cry in front of my children. I want them to have a good life, to live in a just society. They're good boys. They deserve a just society."