Family of eight children to have €87 less in child benefit per month now – and €175 less by 2013

DENIS WHELAN has been out of work for more than two years. He has eight children, aged between two and 16. The former steel worker finds the cuts to his family’s income “hard to take in”.

“I can see into that shopping trolley and there is not one thing that we can leave out. It’s sliced pans, milk, eggs, mince, chicken, a few bits of fruit and veg. As it is, I am borrowing every week.”

Sitting in the front room of his three-bedroom council home in Neilstown, west Dublin, as the social welfare cuts are announced, it becomes clear his family will lose €87 per month immediately and €175 per month over the next two years, in child benefit cuts alone.

The rate for the first two children will remain €140 per month, while that for a third child will reduce from €167 to €148 next month, and to €140 in 2013. The rate for fourth and subsequent children will fall from €177 to €160 in January and to €140 in January 2013.

“I am flabbergasted. I had in my head that we could handle a €50 or €60 a month hit somehow, but this is savage.”

He sets out the money that comes in, and weekly outgoings.

“I get €491.80 per week. Out of that I pay €35 a week on the gas, €35 a week on the ESB, €60 on the rent, €50 to a hire-purchase man I got the telly from, €280 on groceries, €35 on pocket-money for the kids, €21 a week on kids’ bus tickets, €30 a week on petrol and about €80 a week on bits and pieces like fresh milk, bread, you spend on daily stuff.”

His costs come to €626 a week. “So, we borrow from the parents each week, and that gets paid back when the child benefit comes in.”

His wife Elaine receives €980 a month for the children.

Out of that, the family pays back €400 a month for the car loan, €120 a month on car insurance and motor tax, €100 to the credit union and €40 for home internet – something he says is a necessity for the two older children at secondary school.

“I just hope to God they don’t touch the back-to-school allowance,” he says, before learning this too is to be cut, by between €50 and €55 per child, depending on their age. His family will receive €310 less next September towards the cost of school uniforms and books than they did three months ago.

“As it is, we are still paying off the cost of school for this year, and it’s December. We won’t finish until nearly the summer, and then it all starts up again.”

Outlining his family’s life, he says none of his children has ever been to a restaurant. They have had one family holiday, in a friend’s cottage in Wexford some years ago.

Asked when was the last time he brought the children into the city centre, he shrugs. “A year, two years ago. I couldn’t bring them in, to wander around looking into shops and restaurants we can’t go into. It would be too depressing.”

They haven’t been to the cinema in years, while he and Elaine have not been out together in as long.

“We do worry. We do get depressed, and the children do miss out on the things they should have, normal things.”

He has bought a few presents for the children for Christmas, including a second-hand Wii games console for €50, which he will be paying off through the coming year.

Norah Gibbons, director of advocacy with Barnardos, described the cut to child benefit for third and subsequent children as “retrograde and severe”.

“There are clear, well-founded reasons why payments to third and more children are higher. Larger families are a far greater risk of poverty.

“This has been a targeted way of getting more money into those families. It is the poorest families who will be hurt hardest by this cut.”