Sometimes, things in Ireland are hard to square. Many economic and social indicators in this State only ever seem to blow hot or cold; rarely are they reassuringly moderate. We’re either a powerhouse or a disaster zone. At least, that’s how it sometimes feels.
The Irish economy isn’t exactly purring like it’s 2004 all over again. But it is proving extremely resilient in the face of the litany of crises – Brexit, the Covid pandemic, rampant inflation – that it has endured in quick succession over recent years. Ours remains one of the strongest-performing economies in Europe, although growth will slow considerably next year.
Stripping out the impact of multinationals, which give the false impression to the rest of the world that the Irish are as rich as Croesus, growth in the domestic economy is due to fall from a sprightly 8.4 per cent this year to 2.2 per cent in 2023, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) says. The Government is on course for a budget surplus this year and next; and unemployment, which is at a 20-year low of 4.4 per cent, is expected to remain low all next year.
Give all that a cursory glance and you might conclude that, yeah, we’re doing all right. Okay, the shopping costs a bit more than it used to, and it’s expensive to fill up the car. But considering all of Europe is supposed to be straying dangerously close to the edge of an economic boghole, it doesn’t really feel all that bad on this windy, frosty, neurotic little island of ours. That must be a win, right?
Then there’s the other side of the ledger, and it could hardly be more different. This week, The Irish Times published a truly startling story that would make you wonder if news of the State’s supposed economic resilience exists in another dimension.
This newspaper’s social affairs correspondent, Kitty Holland, reported that on Wednesday, gardaí were forced to intervene to control crowds at the Capuchin Day Centre in Dublin, which was handing out tickets for Christmas hampers to people in need. The centre, a vital resource for homeless people and others in need, distributes these hampers every year.
People started queuing at 4am. Alan Bailey, who has volunteered at the centre for 50 years, told this newspaper that the demand this year for the free hampers was the highest he had ever seen.
“At 11am, the guards called a halt to it,” he said. “They said: ‘Look, for everybody’s safety, it has to stop’. We’d given out about 2,800 tickets by then. It was chaos. You can imagine what next week [when the tickets are exchanged for hampers] will be like. It shows the level of need. In all my years here, it is the worst I have ever seen it, absolutely. I am shocked.”
How is it that, in one of the strongest-performing European economies over most of the last decade, demand for charity in one corner of its capital is at an all-time high? There is always demand for charity, but it is the extent of it now, relative to other times, that is the issue here.
Logic suggests that with unemployment at near-historic lows, and employers fighting each other for workers in every sector, economic deprivation should not be at such a peak at this time. How is it worse at the Capuchin Day Centre now than it was when the economy was in the toilet between 2009 and 2012?
Yet the volunteers at the centre weren’t making up the chaotic scenes that transpired there on Wednesday. It is just another one of those things about modern Ireland that isn’t particularly easy to square. Of course, inflation is at the root of the answer. Poorer people on low, relatively fixed incomes, such as State benefits, are hammered much harder than the rest of us by rising prices. Maybe that explains everything. Or maybe not.
There will always be the odd frostbitten cynic who will suggest that a few of the thousands of people in the Capuchin queue perhaps were not in as acute need of a free food hamper as they might at first appear to be. But that also seems to stretch the bounds of credibility, at least as a factor of any real significance.
It is perfectly arguable that modern society has softened its view on accepting charity – the proliferation of public appeals for all sorts of mundane issues on sites such as GoFundMe are reasonable evidence for that. But there remains a significant stigma around being so poor that you need outside help to feed yourself. Personally, I find it difficult to believe that anyone would queue up before dawn on a city street in freezing conditions for a free food hamper unless they needed it.
The latest ESRI research shows that 17.1 per cent of people have suffered “enforced deprivation” this year, compared to 13.8 per cent last year. That backs up the observation of volunteers with on-the-ground experience who say poverty is getting worse.
Enforced deprivation is a bit of a willowy concept. You can meet the ESRI’s criteria if, say, you couldn’t afford “a morning, afternoon or evening out” in the last fortnight, and if you also couldn’t afford “to have family or friends for a drink or a meal once a month”. Those two things, taken together, don’t seem the greatest indicators of a broken society.
But the overall and consistent thrust of much of the ESRI’s research suggests that many people in Ireland are finding it increasingly hard to maintain a decent and dignified standard of living. That seems to be a fact, as much as any economic statistic that shows we have one of the strongest economies in all of Europe. That is true too.
What all of this suggests is that strong or resilient economies don’t automatically mean that every social issue adjacent to poverty can be fixed. Dublin can throw up as many shiny new office buildings as it likes, but it seems there will always be a cohort of people who fall between the cracks.
Does an acceptance of that constitute excessive fatalism? Perhaps. Commentators, of all people, rarely have the answers for issues such as these. But, increasingly, I am starting to wonder if anybody has a credible answer at all.
