Father Peter McVerry

Father Peter McVerry, a Jesuit priest who runs hostels for homeless young people in Dublin, said spending about £1 billion on a national stadium was "absolute madness".

He said the money would be better spent in trying to reach the UN recommended target of spending 0.7 per cent of gross national product on overseas development assistance. The Government last year spent 0.31 per cent of GNP on such assistance.

He believed the repeated reassurances from the Minister of State for Health and Children, Ms Mary Hanafin, that money would not be an obstacle to solving the problems of homeless young people. "The problem is no longer one of resources but the structures within the health boards. You could give them all the money in the world and it wouldn't get it resolved." Father McVerry estimated about 400 children became homeless every year and that on any given night, between 50 to 100 slept rough. Structural problems he blamed for the State's failure to solve the problem included too many middle managers within health boards, and that three ministers shared responsibility for homeless children.

Mick Rafferty

Veteran community activist and director of Community Aid

Mick Rafferty said to fight the legacy of 20 years of recession a balance had to be struck between the cost of a stadium and the amount of money spent rebuilding blighted communities.

Mr Rafferty runs a community support organisation with offices in the heart of the Taoiseach's Dublin constituency. The services which Community Technical Aid offers include training, research and advice on area planning and other issues. It recently trained 26 people to work in heroin-blighted areas of Dublin. He contrasted the estimated £1 billion cost of the stadium with his organisation's recent difficulties in securing funding. CTA applied

for £120,000 a year for the next three years to the Department of Social Community and Family Affairs as its European funding had run out. The opening offer of £50,000 a year would barely cover one professional salary after rent and overheads, he said. "It's outrageous that maybe £1 billion can be given to a stadium when there isn't money to help peo ple reconstruct their communities."

Sister Stanislaus Kennedy

It's catch-up time for the cutbacks of the 1980s, said Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, a campaigner on homelessness and poverty and founder of the homelessness organisation, Focus Ireland. Sister Stan said inequalities had "`grown dramatically since we become better off. Our social welfare really is falling behind. It hasn't caught up in terms of relative incomes, although it has kept pace with inflation. That's not a very popular thing to say because people think people on social welfare get a lot of money but they don't."

In 1989, 11,000 households were on local authority waiting lists; last year this rose to about 45,000 households, she said. She praised the Government's commitments to provide social housing over the next five years, but she doubted if the necessary infrastructure and personnel were available to allow it to deliver on its commitments. "If there's plenty of money to do everything, well let's have the stadium, but why aren't we putting money more into infrastructure for childcare and housing for all, for better health services and really investing in the poorer areas?"

Ms Ronnie Fay

`In principle, there's nothing wrong with the development of a national stadium, but the concern we would have would be around the priorities of resources," said Ms Ronnie Fay, the director of Pavee Point, the Travellers' support organisation.

She referred to a recently published Government report which showed there had been no "real improvement" in the day-to-day lives of Travellers over the past five years. The report of a committee monitoring recommendations of a 1995 task force on the Travelling community found that the circumstances of Travellers remained "intolerable".

Ms Fay estimated that about three-quarters of the 1995 task force's targets have not been implemented, which she at tributes to a lack of political will and to racism at an institutional level and within society. It would cost about £2 million to build a halting site for 10 families, Ms Fay estimated. The task force report recommended that 3,100 units of accommodation be built by 2000; 127 units have been.

Raymond Dooley

Plans to build a national stadium could be a sign of good news for children and young people, said Mr Raymond Dooley, the chief executive of the Children's Rights Alliance, an umbrella group for the rights of children. "It's hard to imagine embarking on such a major spending programme without also addressing the major social and economic needs of children," he said.

Under the 10-year National Children's Strategy, the Government committed itself to providing necessary resources to eliminate child poverty.

Latest figures show more than 120,000 children live in severe deprivation, Mr Dooley said. One in 10 leaves primary school with significant literacy problems, 43,000 live in families on waiting lists for local authority housing, about 1,000 a year drop out of school by the end of primary level and 2,500 more leave before or at Junior Cert. "If we can spend this kind of money on major sports facilities, how can we continue to tolerate child poverty, long waiting lists for healthcare and a refusal to provide meaningful education for children with disabilities?"

Father Sean Healy

It was important to support national sports facilities, said Father Sean Healy, director of the justice office of the Conference of Religious of Ireland (CORI). However, he added, CORI's "number one priority" was to increase the lowest level of social welfare payment post-Budget by an additional £6 a week to bring it up to £90.

In its Budget submission, CORI had called for all social assistance payments to be raised by £14, bringing the lowest payment from £76 a week to £90. The Government increased the lowest payment by £8 to £84, with others increased by £10. There were 430,000 people on social assistance payments at the end of last December. "You could raise all social assistance rates by a further £6 per week for a total cost of less than £150 million in one year," he said. Father Healy said the trend in Government policy was to widen the gap between rich and poor. This was evident in the last Budget, the new Government-subsidised special savings incentive scheme which favoured the rich over the poor, and the rise in TDs' salaries in the Buckley report from £39,000 to £46,500.