Charity takes brave pre-budget stance by telling real-life stories

Behind the economics of austerity and tough policies, ordinary people struggle to survive

STORIES MATTER. We may know something on an intellectual level, but if someone tells us a story, it forms a bridge between the head and the heart. At their best, stories move us from inertia to action.

The Society of St Vincent de Paul launched its pre-budget submission this week by telling stories. A few of its 10,500 volunteers presented typical cases they deal with every day, based on real people but with anonymity preserved.

One case involved a lone father trying to raise four children after losing a labouring job. He hated being out of work, and a community employment scheme “saved his sanity”. Through constant contact and support, the SVP members discovered he had literacy problems. They are able to help out with paperwork, but have not been able to persuade him to attend literacy classes.

Another concerned a wife terrified that her husband will “end up in the river” because of the constant stress of bills they cannot pay. In a telling detail, this mother of three fills the fridge with tinned food from the cupboard, to hide how empty the fridge is. The only thing keeping them going is support from the local SVP conference.

There were good news stories, too, of a former victim of domestic violence brought home to Ireland along with her two children by her mother. All she had was a couple of bags of clothes and £1.60. The SVP helped her in many practical ways, and also steered her towards first a Fás course, and then a course in catering. She is now working part-time in a coffee shop, and her life has been transformed.

Listening to the volunteers presenting the cases, you were reminded again of the struggle that so many Irish people face day after day, including the new poor – middle-class people who may once have seen themselves as donors to SVP, not recipients.

The document is called The Human Face of Austerity, and should be mandatory reading for all members of the Government and policymakers. The current austerity programme is unsustainable. Too many people are suffering, and some are desperate.

Stories matter, but so do evidence and research, as Prof Frances Ruane of the Economic and Social Research Institute pointed out at the launch. In Ireland, we have always been weak on evidence-based policymaking. Prof Ruane suggested that, as a result, sometimes decisions are taken that favour those who shout the loudest, rather than those who are most in need.

This need to promote a culture of evidence-based planning was reinforced from the audience by Labour TD Róisín Shortall. Unsurprising, perhaps, given that she may have experienced the lack of evidence-based decision making more closely than many.

Dr Micheal Collins of the Nevin Economic Research Institute presented important evidence regarding fundamental inequalities.

For example, low incomes are much more common than people realise, as shown by the fact that 250,000 people who used to pay tiny amounts of tax were taken out of the tax net last year.

He also showed that the costs associated with going back to work mean that some people have to earn €6 an hour before gaining any benefit from paid work.

He made a strong case that it would be fairer to spread the burden of the recession by increasing taxation on wealthier citizens, rather than by further and further cuts which afflict the poor disproportionately.

Niall Crowley, independent equality consultant, presented the work of Claiming the Future, a kind of road map which emphasises equality, solidarity and environmental sustainability. He used a telling phrase – low-energy democracy – to describe how inertia and learned helplessness stymie radical change.

My father was a founder member of our local SVP conference, and served for 21 years. As a result, I have always had a soft spot for the SVP, and therefore felt privileged to be one of the invited speakers. If compassionate accompaniment of people in trouble was all that SVP did, it would still be a vital organisation, but it does much more. It is an important advocacy and lobbying group for social justice.

I tried to show how destructive the dominant economic story has been, and how the last thing we need is to “get back to where we were”. Our current system is built on believing that profit constitutes the highest value, human beings are primarily individuals as opposed to members of communities, constant consumption is the route to fulfilment, the marketplace will provide, and long-term thinking is neither wise nor possible for politicians who wish to get re-elected.

Any other world view based on values such as community and environmental sustainability is dismissed as naive, utopian and unworkable. In reality, it is the current system that is doomed to endless cycles of boom and bust, with the financial markets, as Martin Wolf says, inherently susceptible to manias and panics.

Listening to the stories told by the SVP is a spur to change the dominant story that has resulted in misery for so many people. We need to move past apathy and low energy, unless we want to continue to condemn people to lives of quiet desperation in an allegedly civilised and developed country. Perhaps some of these stories will change what matters in our society.