Family of eight lives in two-bedroom flat

Tracy Ryan (30), her husband and their six children live in a two-bedroom council flat in Dublin's south inner-city on an income of €307 per week.

Five of the children, aged three, four, six, eight and 11 sleep on four bunk-beds and a couch in one room, their parents and the baby in the other.

If their €880 per month child benefit is added, their average weekly income comes to €527 - still €42 below the threshold that would lift them out of the consistent poverty range.

"My husband gets €74 a week from the social and I get €233, though by the time they take the rent off it I come out with €195," Ms Ryan explains. Sitting in the tiny living room with her one-year-old daughter, Abbey, she says can't get work because if she did she would lose the children's medical card.

"I got a cleaning job a while ago - it gave me €140 every two weeks - but I had to stop it because I'd lose the medical card and most of my payment." If her husband got a job the same would happen.

Her first priority with the €195 a week she collects is the week's shopping she does, "in Tesco and Aldi". "I got the shopping in today and it was about €100, though that's without nappies and washing powder. You get much cheaper stuff in Aldi, but you can't get the good brands.

"Every now and again I get fruit and vegetables at the market on Meath Street, but we wouldn't have them every day."

"Monday and Tuesday is stew; Wednesday is corned beef. Thursday and Friday is mostly just chips. Saturday is whatever is there and on Sundays I do a proper dinner.

"It is tough, especially doing the shopping. There's always things you see in Tesco you'd like but you just can't. The kids would like the different drinks. They always want to get the Frosties, but we go through a box of cereal a morning and Frosties is nearly €4 a box," she says.

On top of the basic shopping there's ESB - "about €15 a week on the meter" , the gas - "€20 a week" and daily costs such as milk and bread.

The monthly child benefit is "great for stocking up on ESB cards and most months I've borrowed some money from my sister and I pay her back."

One of the children "always needs shoes" and she worries now about getting them all coats and warm clothes for the winter.

The navy school uniform, without the school crest, the children are wearing she bought at a cut-price shop in Thomas Street. Most of her children don't mind, her eldest daughter, Terri (11), does. "I think she's embarrassed. They all want the same thing as the other kids at that age."

Asked whether she ever takes them to, for example, the cinema, she shakes her head, wide-eyed.

"God no. That's would cost about €50 - without sweets. I'd love to be able bring them out. I'd love a car like, especially in the summer. You see people going off to the beach for the day. It's a nightmare getting them all on the train for the day, so we don't do that kind of thing often.

She rarely buys clothes for herself, though, she grins, "I did buy these jeans and this jumper yesterday. The jeans were €20 and the jumper €11. The first things I've got in ages."

She worries about the children "because they aren't getting the things other kids get. I worry all the time. If it wasn't for my own family, we'd be broke."