RITE AND REASON: Whose recovery is our national plan actually seeking to ensure?
SO, HERE we are. Facing the worst budget in the history of the State, fresh from the admission by Government that we’ve finally hit the iceberg and the big boys moving in just to help keep the deck of sinking ship Ireland above water. The Government’s majority in the Dáil is uncertain and a general election looms. The National Recovery Plan presented last week makes for grim reading.
This is history in the making; but what history. As Ireland bobs helplessly in one of her most unsettled periods since the Civil War, thousands of people are wondering what the next year will bring for them. It’s unlikely to bring anything good.
These are the people for whom the Celtic tiger failed to roar.
Those families and children living in communities across Ireland; forgotten, abandoned and sacrificed to the gods of the big buck and the Ireland that “moved forward” through the tent, over endless building sites, past the doors of Anglo, finally pitching up outside the IMF.
Now generations of Irish children in the most disadvantaged communities will sacrifice their childhoods to pay for the mistakes made by politicians they’ll hear about in history class.
This year, Barnardos felt the need to try and explain the things we’re seeing on the ground with increasing and terrifying frequency. It seems nearly laughable now to think that this might have had some impact on a Government that was clearly so close to collapse when we held our “Dreading December” launch on November 11th last.
We’re seeing different families facing the same awful situations right across the country. The hardship, the despair and the increasing hopelessness that there is no better future out there for their children. Their children are not the ones who are to be saved by the Government, the IMF or anyone else.
No. Their children are the ones who are going to have to give up even more of their meagre income as social welfare is cut; the ones who bore the brunt of the last four budgets which failed to significantly raise income tax for the wealthy but cut social welfare for the poor.
We’re all dreading December now more than ever. But for the families we work with, December and every month after it are looking bleak. We’ve already seen families increasingly relying on moneylenders just to get through the month. We’ve seen them getting caught in cycles of debt they can’t get out of.
Most shockingly we know that there are children in Ireland going hungry. We know this because some of our services are being asked by children if they can take food home because there isn’t enough at home.
This is Ireland 2010; the chaos of recent weeks should not deflect from the horror of that reality. The fact that this can be true in a country that remains relatively wealthy in comparison to many is truly appalling.
How much of our sovereignty have we given away? How much do economists from the IMF and Europe need to care about the impact of this year’s budget on the children and families of Ireland?
What I do know is that the day after the four-year plan was announced, the EU Survey of Income and Living Conditions published its statistics for 2009. Consistent child poverty rose from 6.3 per cent in 2008 to 8.7 per cent in 2009 – from one in 16 of our children to one in 11.
It begs the question whose recovery is our national plan actually seeking to ensure?
Childhoods and futures are on the line. Cuts to social welfare, education and health spending will push more children further into poverty and disadvantage.
Amidst the ruins of Ireland’s economic independence, they are the ones left scavenging for the scraps of a future.
Norah Gibbons is director of advocacy at Barnardos. “Dreading December” can be seen at barnardos.ie