According to new estimates released last week by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), almost 230,000 children in the State are going without basic items and activities, as families struggle financially in the wake of rising house and rent prices, along with the general cost of living.
For families finding it difficult to make ends meet, there is constant worry and stress about what an unexpected bill or unplanned cost might mean. For others, the worry of trying to keep warm as we approach the winter doesn’t bear thinking about.
Here, three parents offer a glimpse into their daily financial situation.
‘I don’t want to think about it’
Ciara is a single parent. She has a toddler and earns €31,000 annually working in a call centre. “All the clothes for my child are second hand,” she says. “I get them from other people.”
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Ciara tries to put some money by, where she can, for the heating, until she builds up enough to buy oil. She doesn’t put the heating on in the evening when she comes home from work if she can help it. She says, in the cold weather, she goes to bed shortly after her child does, to help cut down on heating costs.
Their house needs work she can’t afford. There’s a hole in the roof. The leak has come down the side of the wall. “I’ve a towel stuck in it and buckets.” She’s grateful the weather hasn’t been too bad the last few days, but she’s worried about winter. She has taken out a loan, but she’s not sure if there’ll be enough to get the roof fixed and get oil for winter. “I don’t want to think about it.”
She is trying to save money where she can. “I’m trying to see where I can cut back.” In supermarkets, she buys food that has been marked down in price because it will go out of date shortly. “I buy them up and put them in the freezer. Stuff you wouldn’t be seen dead doing before, that you wouldn’t want people to see.”
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Because her child is so young, he’s oblivious to what’s going on. “But I don’t know what it will be like when he’s a bit older,” Ciara says.
Ciara hasn’t had a holiday or any kind of break in eight years. She works in a different county to the one in which she lives, and finds the cost of diesel very difficult to manage.
She just can’t see a way out of the position she and her young child are in.
‘A genuine struggle’
Shane works in the public sector. He earns €35,000 and is a single father to two children. He’s finding trying to manage financially “a genuine struggle”.
This is especially true in the aftermath of back to school. “Shopping on a Sunday has become a smaller basket and each bill gets pushed a week more each time. Trying to do everything and feel like I’m not failing them is a weekly struggle.”
Shane has cut most of the little treats he used to buy for his family out of his shopping to try to manage the food bill. He tries to always buy whatever food is on offer and shops between supermarkets to try to get the most affordable options he can. He goes without himself, so that he can provide as best he can for his children.
He feels the guilt of peer pressure when he finds himself unable to buy the sort of clothes his children might prefer. And he’s having to negotiate which trips in the car he can afford to take, in a desperate effort to cut back on petrol.
“I won’t put petrol in the car,” sometimes, he explains. “You’re deciding not to go for a spin because you think I need to get the [children] to training on Thursday. You find yourself looking at things like that.”
He’s cut back on days out for the children too. As we edge closer to winter, Shane finds himself wondering week on week, how many weeks he can push back the need to buy oil. “It’s a hard thing to say as a parent, ‘we’re not going to put on the heat this week – we’ll put on the heat next week’.”
With Christmas coming into line of sight, Shane counts up the number of child benefit payments due before then. He hopes it will cover the costs of Santa, but lives in fear that something else could crop up. “Let’s hope there isn’t a bill. Let’s hope the car doesn’t stop. Let’s hope there isn’t something that will take that money.”
He worked overtime last Christmas to try to help improve his situation, but that saw his other social welfare benefits reduced. “It’s a worry for this time of year.”
‘Mam feeds us twice a week’
Amy and her partner have one child. Her partner is self-employed and she estimates their combined household income is about €49,000.
“I’m very lucky my mam feeds us twice a week,” she says. “The luxury of getting a family meal. But that saves us a bomb.”
She tries to shop smart to get as many meals as possible from the food she buys, but says she’s “100 per cent” dependent on her mother feeding her family a couple of times a week. “I’m going around supermarkets trying to calculate stuff in my head,” she explains, as she tries to work out if she can “afford the treat this week”. She says her community is incredible – if one of the neighbours has sweets they will share with the other children, so that helps ease some of the pressure.
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Her son’s grandparents bought most of her son’s school uniform for him. Other clothes are hand-me-downs. Her little boy loves football, she says, but she could never afford to buy him a “real jersey”. She’s had to cut back on activities, such as sports, that her son wanted to take part in, as she couldn’t afford the cost.
The couple had been trying for another baby, but it didn’t happen. Their existing financial situation, and inability to afford treatment, meant they had to give up on that dream.
She’s worried about heating bills as winter approaches. There have been times when Amy reduced heating use to make sure she could cover her mortgage. “Even if it’s freezing”, she won’t turn on the heating outside of the winter months. “I can’t justify it in my own head.”
