Poverty strategy has done little for the likes of Mary

Life for Mary (56) has not changed much over the past five years since the Government's poverty strategy was published. She still uses a money lender and still juggles bills.

Sitting in her comfortably, if sparsely, furnished local authority house, in the Summerhill area of Dublin's inner-city, the widow says life was better five years ago when she was a street trader around Moore Street: "But then I got caught. I didn't have a licence and had to stop. I couldn't get work because of my age, so it can be tough some weeks."

Her Widow's Pension is €118.80 a week. Each week she spends €12 on electricity, €12 on the phone, €25 to the money lender, €12 on Dunnes Stores savings stamps, €5 to a meat-club from which she can buy meat at wholesale prices, and €40 on rent.

"That leaves me, what? €12. It's gone by the time I leave the post office. So I'm always running from Billy to Jack trying to skip one bill to pay another." She hasn't paid her rent for almost a month, she tells me later.

There is widespread use of money-lenders in her area: "I got a loan of £300 just before Christmas, and with the interest I owe £550 now. But I'm not the worst. There's a woman a few doors down with seven kids who has three loans with different lenders and I know she can't afford it."

Mary's diet consists of toast for both breakfast and lunch, with a dinner of "rashers, or sausages, potatoes, maybe a turnip or some cabbage."

Asked about clothing herself, she tugs at the leg of her black, cotton-mix trousers: "My sister got me them, for €5, and I bought these shoes in Dunnes before Christmas. They're grand, but I couldn't just go out and buy an outfit."

There are "big" purchases she would like to make: "I could do with a new bed. I've had that for more than 20 years now. I keep saying I'll pay off the loan and then I'll get another and get a new bed."

Asked how she feels about Government assertions that poverty has been enormously reduced, she laughs.

"Well, they said in the ad, 'The change is in your pocket'. As far as people round here are concerned, the change is in Charlie McCreevy's pocket, because we're not seeing it."

In nearby Ballybough, Karen (28) doesn't eat breakfast, "to make sure the Weetabix lasts the week for the kids".

Sitting in her brightly painted flat the pretty mother-of-two says she has less money now than she did four years ago, "but that's because I was working then. I can't afford the child-minding".

Her income in 1997 was about £180 a week, between the Children's Allowance, her wages and Lone Parent's Allowance. She now gets about €170 a week, between the Children's Allowance and the Lone Parents Allowance.

Where she had a one-year-old then, Dillon is now five and she also has a one-year-old, Cian.

"My rent is €31 a week and I spend €12 on the ESB and the gas each week. I go to the supermarket, Dunnes, once a week. I know exactly what I'm getting each time. I never pick up any extras like jam or cakes. That comes to about €40."

"The kids have Weetabix for breakfast, lunch might be toast and then dinner - potatoes, some meat and maybe beans or spaghetti, then tea and bed."

For treats, like cakes and biscuits, she depends on the children's grand-parents. Though she and the boys' father have split up, he is "very good, buys them clothes and runners".

She rarely buys such luxuries as new clothes or make-up for herself. "I wait 'til Mother's Day and Christmas for those," she smiles.