"The current economic boom is false and exclusive. It is creating as much hardship as prosperity," says Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, founder and president of Focus Ireland. "Twenty per cent of our people live in poverty and the poor have become marginalised."
Cheerful and direct, she is not a prophet of doom and admits to enjoying Christmas - "I love the party and the celebration" - yet has few illusions and mentions the homeless who will be sleeping in doorways tonight. Recent research carried out by Focus Ireland confirms there are 45,800 people on local authority housing lists.
"I can't understand why we put so much importance on the wrong aspect, all this buying and running around. Christmas is about loving and sharing. It's about home, it's a celebration of people, not things. It's not a competition.
"I know old people who borrow money and go without themselves to buy presents for their grandchildren."
A large potted Christmas tree stands in the corner of the small sitting room in the house she shares with two other sisters. The tree is shrouded in red tinsel. There are no other decorations. It looks different; a somewhat minimalist style of decoration. She bursts out laughing, "It's not finished yet. We just put it up in a hurry. Later, we'll plant it in the garden."
Dramatic photographs of Co Kerry dominate the walls. A native of Lispole, just outside Dingle, she says it is one of the most beautiful places in Ireland, in the world. So how does she manage to live in a city? "My work brought me here. But Kerry is home. I'll go back. I'd be mad not to."
Having hurt her back, she stands hunched against the pain as well as the cold, and prepares soup. The phone never stops ringing.
Her house is just outside the gates of Stanhope Green, the residential housing complex inspired by her. "Our budget is £4 million and we have to raise one million ourselves." Inside the main house, residents are putting up decorations. A small "Welcome Santa" poster is in the front window of one of the facing houses. The children are taking no chances.
Sister Stan - the name she most often answers to - stands in the wind for a photograph. Her strong, humorous face is one the most recognised in Ireland.
Whimsy and a well-developed sense of humour counter the practicality of her observations. Above all, however, she is an optimist. At the moment she looks exhausted. "I'm always running around and yet I'm always warning others about the need to avoid stress and pressure and look at me, I'm like a headless chicken."
Two small boys look warily at the photographer. A woman passes and greets her, adding approvingly, "I saw you on the telly the other night. You were very good."
Born in 1940, the fourth daughter in a row to a family of small farmers, the young Treasa Kennedy did not have a religious vocation as such. "I just knew I wanted to work with the poor. I knew the work I wanted to do, the religious aspect came later. Or perhaps I should say, I understood the religious aspect later." There were two years between each of the Kennedy babies and the one that came after her, the fifth, was the first and only son.
"We were neither rich nor poor, but it was a small community and I think I was always aware of the difference between those who had something - not much but something, maybe a few animals or a bit of land - and those who had nothing."
When she was at national school her sisters had moved on to secondary. There was always the sense of being a couple of steps behind them. `So I spent a lot of time with my brother. We were back at the house with our mother when the others were away at school." Life was certainly less complicated. "The national school was near home. I loved going there. And there was no sense of a break or division between school and the house. It was all part of the one thing. My childhood was simple but it was very beautiful."
Both of her parents were from Kerry. "My mother came from the fior Ghaeltacht - where Peig Sayers came from; my father came from the breac area. Both my parents spoke beautiful Irish." From an early age she too spoke the language.
"But you know, then there was this feeling that if you spoke Irish you were looked down on. It was as if you were somehow kind of inferior, while if you spoke English, that was different. There was little Irish spoken in Dingle then and none spoken in the shops. It's not like now. Irish is treated with respect. But when I was young," she pauses and gestures her own disbelief, "speaking Irish in Dingle 40 years ago would be used as proof that you were uneducated."
National school was a joy. "I played camogie - I wasn't any good at it - but I enjoyed school." Life changed at secondary school. She cycled the three miles to the Presentation Sisters in Dingle. The bike was a liberation for her. But along with that freedom came new constraints.
"Exams became important. It wasn't difficult. It was different. I was also quite wild. I was not at all religious." Searching to define the differences secondary school introduced her to, she says, "It might seem strange but there is a specific incident which, for me, marked the end of an old life and the start of something very different. Almost alien."
Dogs were a vital part of the Kennedy home. "I remember rushing to school in the town. I was late for an exam. I think it was the Inter. Well the dog followed me. None of our dogs had ever been allowed out on the road. And it was a lot less dangerous then than it is now. But the dog, one that I was very fond of, followed me. When I got to school, he was there behind me. I asked could I take him in. I wasn't allowed. And all the time I was doing the exam, I was fretting that the dog would be hit by a car before I came out." He was. "I never saw the dog again. He never came home. For me, it was a lesson between the old ways and the new. At the National school I would have been let bring the dog in."
She admits to being an emotional person but she is also highly practical. "I wanted to work with the poor. I'd made my mind up and it was one of my sisters who told me about the Irish Sisters of Charity - a friend of hers was joining the order. They were the people who worked with the poor and the homeless. That was it. I joined the nuns."
It was 1958. She entered the novitiate in Milltown. At that time, work rather than contemplation interested her, although she has become increasingly interested in meditation. She is also an obsessive reader of poetry and fiction. Novels by Ivan Klima and Saul Bellow catch the eye. "Education was always important. My mother was a great believer in women being educated and having a career. I knew I didn't want to be a nurse or a teacher."
As a young nun her first experience of real poverty was working with the poor of Ringsend. It was dramatic and upsetting. Working for the poor is idealistic and selfless but the reality involves difficult and humiliating tasks such as going from door to door, looking for funds. Years later she can smile and describe herself as a difficult, stubborn woman.
Among politicians she has worked with, she has seen the good and the self-serving. There is one whom she admires greatly. "I will never forget Frank Cluskey. He was unique, a rare and generous human being." The young Sister Stanislaus often cried. "I have seen so much hardship, and still do. This is the point I can't stress often enough. All this wealth we have in Ireland now, and all this poverty we have. The poor may be invisible - although I can't understand this: surely people can see them begging in the streets of Dublin - but they are here among us and suffering."
Having worked with Bishop Birch in Kilkenny for eight years, during which the bishop's famous Conference on Poverty marked a turning point in the national awareness of poverty, she returned to Dublin in 1983. Research carried out for a Master's degree in social science brought her directly into contact with women in crisis. "I studied the individual situations of eight women living in housing provided by the sisters." It had a profound effect on her. It also inspired her to found Focus Point.
"We have grown - we are now the largest voluntary organisation in Ireland. We have centres in Waterford and Limerick, as well." Her success is as understandable as it is relentless. Likeable, a good talker with a vivid, colourful turn of phrase and a wonderful Kerry accent, she does not lecture, nor does she sermonise. She makes the impossible seem possible, in fact logical. "We are in the business of housing; of creating homes. Everyone has a right to shelter, warmth, food to eat. Everyone has a right to their dignity."
Aware that many people object once they hear there are plans for housing schemes for the poor near their own homes, she says, "No one wants the poor near them. It is a shame, particularly at this time of the year. We, the Irish, are more comfortable giving money to people in other countries."
Of the Dublin she lives in, she says: "My work is here. But it has become a wild, angry place. The poor are invisible. So are children and the old. In fact, I think there is an absence of children in Dublin. Why is this?"
Never one to deny her pragmatism, she is not cynical but lives in hope, concluding, "We do need to care about people."