“I’d be the first person to tell other people there’s no shame in going and asking for help,” says Naomi Connolly, a mother of three, on the struggle to make ends meet.
“But when it came to me, personally, having to ask for that help, it was really tough, absolutely awful. I felt so ashamed that I couldn’t provide properly for my children.”
Connolly (45), who lives in west Dublin, and her ex-husband legally separated in 2018 and though she worked for a period afterwards, she lost her job in 2020. This, she suggests, was in part because of the amount of time she needed to take off because of her children, two of whom have autism.
“When I got an appointment for one of them, I had to take it. There was no choice but it got to the stage where my boss said to me: ‘Would you not be better off on social welfare?’ I said, ‘No, I want to work,’ but I’d be the first to admit, because I’m a carer for their needs, I’m not a reliable employee.”
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The years since, she says, have been “challenging”.
Figures published last week by Central Statistics Office highlight that almost half of lone parents with children aged under 18 live in deprivation. Almost a third went into debt last year to meet day-to-day needs.
This comes as no surprise to Connolly.
In her case, there are a few loan repayments to come out of the roughly €500 a week she usually gets in lone parent and carer allowances.
Previously an accounts administrator, she has gone back to college to study social care while doing the occasional relief work shift at a refuge when family commitments allow.
Unpaid work placements connected with her course, meanwhile, can impact her income if they take up too many hours in the week, she says, meaning a portion of her carer’s allowance sometimes stops.
It is all a balancing act and with her youngest not always attending school, it has been hard to make it into college in Blanchardstown. The financial pressures are more constant, though.
“I actually feel like one of the lucky ones because my ex-husband pays the mortgage and so I don’t have to worry about that, although the house will be sold when my youngest is 18, in seven years’ time, and I won’t be able to buy him out unless something drastically changes,” she says.
“I have to tell my children ‘no’ a lot of the time. ‘Can I get this?’ And I’m like, ‘no’, because it’s not in the budget. It’s quite difficult. And Christmas, if the children are with me, is a massive struggle. Thankfully, they don’t ask for a lot. And the credit union is my best friend.
“But there was a trip to Spain in my eldest’s school a little while back and she didn’t even put her name forward. She’s conscious of how tight money is from an early age. I would have found it from somewhere. It’s heartbreaking.”
In addition to the constant juggling, minor mishaps,such as the recent problem with her car that cost €200 to fix, represent big setbacks. Connolly also has had to pay for private appointments for her youngest two children because of waiting times.
The increased provision of school meals has helped, she says, but there have been various occasions when she has had to fall back on her local food bank to feed everyone.
“When I first contacted them, I was really struggling. Thankfully in the last few months I haven’t been. I’ve been really trying to carefully manage, setting a very strict budget that I try and keep to.”
Connolly says things like the one-off social protection and fuel payments have really helped, but she wishes these were spread out over the year so she could budget for it.
“Getting back to work is the dream,” she says. She should finish her degree this year but is not certain how things will work out because of childcare challenges.
Carly Bailey, policy manager at One Family, says the difficulties faced by lone parents can vary. The sort of financial issues Connolly faces account for a substantial proportion of the calls the organisation’s helpline receives.
Short-term pressures on lone parents to get back into the workforce can lead to longer-term problems, she says, as many take on low-paid roles that leave one in five to endure in-work poverty.
The organisation would like to see more parents being supported to return to education, as Connolly has done, and build secure futures for them and their families.
In the meantime, Bailey suggests, these parents, predominantly women, badly need the Government to address structural issues such as housing and healthcare provision.
“Going back to education is about the long term,” she says, adding that this can be hard to think about “when you’re scraping every day just to make ends meet.”
