Three families living on the edge

A working family:Despite working as a special needs assistant, Marie reckons her take-home pay isn't much different to what she would get if she was on welfare.

With a teenage son and daughter still living at home and a husband who has been incapacitated since he received a heart transplant in the 1980s, the €430 a week she brings home is swallowed up rapidly.

"I find it very, very hard. When you have to pay rent, ESB, phone bills and shopping bills, there's barely anything left," says Marie, who lives in Tallaght, Co Dublin.

Christmas is especially hard, no matter how much planning she does. It's even tougher now that her kids are teenagers, she says.

"Teenagers are expensive. One of my sons is 17. He takes size 11 shoes. He's not a child, even though he's classified as one. He wears men's clothes and shoes, which are more expensive," she says. "They're growing men and women. It takes a lot of money to feed and clothe them."

If Marie was on welfare she might have a similar income, given the rent, fuel and back-to-school allowance available. But she says working is vitally important to her. "I might get more on welfare benefit, who knows, but working is important. It gets you out of the house and gives you a lease of life."

After spending several years living on State welfare, she is now trying to pay off loans she took out to help meet day-to-day costs. The most important thing to her is ensuring her children have the best chance in life.

"You end up going without to ensure your kids are involved in sport and various activities. In this day and age you've got to keep them occupied and have something for them to do."

A lone parent

Miriam (32) has taken out a €2,500 loan to pay for Christmas, clear her debts and pay her utility bills. She is determined to have enough money this year, unlike last Christmas when her children didn't get the presents they asked for.

"Last year my oldest daughter wanted a new bike, but I couldn't afford it. I felt terrible on Christmas Day. You want to see their eyes light up - except she was so disappointed. I don't want to repeat that this year," she says.

This year she has enough to get a Bratz TV/DVD player for her daughter and a Spiderman TV for her son.

Miriam, who receives the lone parent's allowance of just over €200 a week and child maintenance of around €130, is determined to escape what she sees as the poverty trap of lone parenthood by getting a good job.

While she left secondary school early, she has since completed a third-level access programme and is in the process of completing a degree course. It has only been possible through the assistance of St Vincent de Paul, she says. "When I was looking for a third-level grant, I kept getting a sneering kind of attitude. It was like, 'this is your box, and don't think about trying to get out of it'.

"I've been laughed out of banks trying to get loans. I was only able to get a loan this time because I'm technically a student. A lot of the time it feels like there is no escape. The attitude seems to be that you will always live hand to mouth."

If she doesn't get a third-level qualification, she figures it would hardly be worthwhile to work given the salary levels. However, if she qualifies, she feels her prospects will be much better.

"I look through the Evening Herald some days and look at the salaries for positions like legal secretaries, starting at €35,000. That keeps me going. I just don't want to end up like my mam, crying in frustration over ESB bills that I can't pay."

A welfare-dependent family

Anne has been carefully planning her Christmas spending for months now. In September she started a special account with Doran's, a local toy shop in Ballyfermot, and put aside €10 a week. Not long afterwards she started keeping a similar Christmas account with her butcher and chemist.

For almost four months she has kept up the weekly savings, apart from when there was a birthday or some event which involved spending a little extra. And this is the way she lives: planning at every stage to stretch her income as far it will possibly go. "If you're disciplined, it's possible to pay for the essentials. You don't have to live in a state of poverty when you're on welfare. A month or two ago there was a special on turkeys in Tesco, so I got two. You have to keep your eyes open," she says.

She and her husband, who is disabled, receive a combined total of €383 a week in welfare benefits. The medical card insulates them against medical expenses. The back-to-school allowances and child benefit increases mean it is now easier for her to raise her 10-year-old child than it was to bring up her other children, who are now grown up and have left the family home.

But there is a meanness over restrictions to some benefits, she says. The family was denied a special diabetes allowance for her husband because they were €2.67 over the income threshold, she says.

There are times when she thinks she would like to go back to her job in a creche, but the fear or losing the medical card, fuel allowance or phone allowance means she won't risk it.

"The big difference between now and the 1980s is that expectations are higher," she says. "Most people want a holiday abroad. Most people on the street here have cars now and there are problems finding parking space. That was never an issue before. In that way it can be hard to keep up with others, if that matters to you."

The names of interviewees have been changed to protect their privacy