Having a job means you can afford to keep your family, right? Not if you are like an increasing number of workers, reports Kitty Holland

Brendan Grogan never thought he'd be facing choices such as whether to pay the gas or the ESB. "People say to me, when they hear I'm an IT trainer, God, you must be loaded, and I just look at them. It just always seems you're robbing Peter to pay Paul."

Married with two young children, Grogran is an assistant supervisor and information-technology instructor at Clondalkin Centre for the Unemployed, in west Dublin. After two years his take-home pay is €340 a week, almost €100 more than he would earn on the minimum wage. But still he finds supporting his family a struggle.

He is an example of a phenomenon that the Society of St Vincent de Paul says it has not seen since the 1980s: the working poor. "Up until about 18 months ago, having a job was a fair guarantee that a person wouldn't experience poverty," says Prof John Monaghan, vice-president of the society, which is receiving twice as many help calls as it was a year ago. A growing proportion of the callers are in work. "We are seeing people in jobs, small-business owners, who are really struggling to make ends meet."

Grogan says: "We live with my mother-in-law, which works well. Our share of the rent is €50 a week. Then the ESB and the gas are on the meter, and they're about €15 or €20 a week.

"Food bills? Well, you know kids: it's like feeding an army. My wife, Sandra, she does the shopping in Dunnes Stores. She's always looking out for value."

The weekly shop costs €100-€140; they also spend €5-€10 a day on things like bread and milk. "We don't really have treats; we try to eat healthily and try to have the odd treat for the kids."

Asked if they ever eat out, he shakes his head. "The last time was for Natasha's Communion, last May, and that was a function paid for by the centre. Myself and Sandra go out the odd time, but not often."

Clothes for the children are a struggle, and Grogan is thankful they don't mind wearing Dunnes and Penneys clothes. "I suppose that won't last for long," he smiles. "They get slagged for not having the right runners, but they say they don't care. School uniforms are very expensive, and the school books for the two of them were €110."

As they don't quite qualify for family income supplement, they have to go elsewhere for basics. Grogan says he and Sandra almost never buy themselves new clothes. The last time was for his daughter's Communion, when he borrowed almost €1,000 from the credit union, which also helped to pay for the day. He'll be paying off the loan for more than a year.

The best way to lift people out of poverty is to give them jobs, real jobs, according to Tony Blair before he became Britain's prime minister. In this newspaper last month, Mary Harney, the Tánaiste, wrote that, measured by that yardstick, she and her colleagues have done much to tackle poverty and social exclusion.

Certainly, unemployment has gone down and average incomes have gone up since Fianna Fáil and Harney's Progressive Democrats took the helm, in June 1997. But the sentiment she so approvingly echoed is, according to Monaghan, "a couple of terms short of a solution".

The unemployment rate has gone down from 10.3 per cent in mid-1997 to 4.4 per cent today. The rate of consistent poverty - living without such basics as a warm coat or a hot meal each day - has also declined, from 15 per cent in 1994 to 6 per cent in 2000. In the same period, however, relative poverty - living on less than 60 per cent of the average industrial wage - has increased from 15.6 per cent to 22 per cent. Jim Walsh, chief research officer with the Combat Poverty Agency, which plans to publish its findings on "income poverty" late next year, points to the statistics to illustrate what he describes as an emerging issue.

"If we look at consistent poverty, which 5.2 per cent of the population experience, of that about 19 per cent are in employed households. In 1998 that proportion was 10 per cent. So it has doubled. If we look at relative poverty, again about 19 per cent of that group are living in 'employed' households. That's up from just 6 per cent in 1998. So it has more than trebled." He says the risk of falling into income poverty has more than trebled in five years, from 2.6 per cent in 1998 to 8 per cent today.

Kieran Stenson, manager of the crisis desk at the homelessness charity Focus Ireland, says the proportion of people seeking help with housing has grown over the past 18 months "from a base of about zero to between 10 and 15 per cent". He adds: "Up until about a year and half ago it was highly, highly unusual for someone to have a job and to be houseless."

Stenson says the people who come in to the charity with a housing crisis are in all types of job, "from working part-time in a local shop to office workers to nursing. Low-wage jobs just don't keep body and soul together any more".

Families dependent on low incomes are at greatest risk of poverty, says Jim Walsh. It is too simple to say wages are low and should be higher. We need to look at what is happening within families and what supports are needed to help them enhance their incomes, he says. "We have had active labour market measures that have succeeded with getting people into work. But we have to move our thinking beyond that. It's not enough. The big problem is that while more people are in work the income gap is widening."

Monaghan echoes the point. "Current government thinking seems to be: get them off welfare, into a job, and then abandon them. That's not working."

Stemming the growth of a working-poor population, says Walsh, will require tax and welfare systems to "work harder" to help lift people out of their predicament in the long term and compensate for it in the short. "It requires a policy response that is not cheap."

Families with many dependants need more support. Accordingly, the Society of St Vincent de Paul has called for the number of people eligible for family income supplement to be increased in the Budget next month. In last week's Estimates, however, the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Mary Coughlan, cut the scheme's budget by 4 per cent, meaning the society's hopes "are probably just a pipe dream", says Monaghan.

Education and training are also critical, according to Walsh - a point reiterated by the Society of St Vincent de Paul, by ICTU in its pre-Budget submission and by the Economic and Social Research Institute. Last week's Estimates again disappointed, cutting eligibility for the back-to-education allowance. Now applicants must be on welfare for 15 months before qualifying, instead of six.

"It's crazy," says Monaghan. "If you want to help people move out of low-paid work you have to help train them. If you don't train them they're dead."

He is pessimistic that the Budget will contain any dramatic help for the growing number of working poor, particularly given that Charlie McCreevy, the Minister for Finance, says he is seeking another €91 million in charges and that the "signals are that benefit increases will be of the same small order as last year: about €6 in the lowest rate".

The Tánaiste, approvingly quoting Blair, said the Government had increased jobs through low taxation. "McCreevy looks very unlikely to increase taxation," says Monaghan. "Given this and the other signals, I think we are going to have a problem."

Brendan Grogan's main regret is that he can't give the children more days out or let them do some of the things they'd like. "Like, last year, Natasha got a little electric organ, and she would have loved lessons. I did look into it, but they were looking for €25 a lesson."

Life seems to get more difficult for them all the time, and he constantly looks for other work, but the pay is either the same or worse than he gets at present. To earn more he would need another qualification.

"The HDip would mean going back to full-time education and the MCSE [Microsoft certified systems engineer\] costs between€2,000 and €5,000. Both are out of the question. I love the job, love the team, get great satisfaction. To be paid well would be the thing," he says, smiling.