When four-year-old Mary and two-year-old Paddy come to our house they have only one object in mind. They want a go on the tricycle. Their mother, Anne, would have dearly loved to give Mary a trike when she begged for one for Christmas. But she knows that for a child living by the side of the road, a trike would be dangerous.
Anne has other priorities. She wants a house. She wants Mary to go to a proper school. Anne knows her place on the waiting-list and has little hope of getting into a house before Mary's First Holy Communion.
She really hoped Mary would go to a national school in Ballinteer and she hung on to her spot in a field there, mud notwithstanding. Then she got moved on, and our discussions about how a school uniform might be provided became sadly redundant.
When people debate the nature of poverty, I think of Mary's trike. Tricycles don't rank when politicians and sociologists compile lists of the basic necessities of life. But when they talk about social exclusion, I see Mary's little longing face as her mother coaxes her out of our front drive.
There was good news on poverty last week, or so it appeared. This newspaper reported that poverty levels were about 25 per cent lower than previously estimated. A draft ESRI study appeared to show that when non-cash benefits - free fuel, rides on the buses, medical cards - were taken into account, a quarter of the poor didn't seem poor any more compared to the rest of us.
This was first aired in a statement from the Minister for Social Affairs, Mr Ahern, whose Department had commissioned the ESRI study. "Government is winning battle against poverty" it was headed. Excerpts from the report later found their way into the public domain. Sadly for the Minister, life is never that simple.
A discreet little letter to the editor from the ESRI followed. "Ahem," interjected the ESRI researchers Brian Nolan and Helen Russell. "We hadn't actually finished our work. Now we are looking at the non-cash benefits the rest of you get." (I paraphrase.) Surprise, surprise, when you look at pension and VHI contributions from employers, workplace creches, canteens, sports clubs, company cars, perhaps even having somewhere warm to sit all day with free newspapers, a coffee machine, soap and toilet paper, the poor start looking poorer again.
"When benefits provided by employers are also taken into account, no dramatic fall in relative-income poverty is seen," the authors of the study gently admonished.
Back to Mary's trike. There are two ways of looking at poverty in the contemporary lexicon: there is consistent poverty and there is relative poverty. Consistent poverty is what we are all agreed on. No one disputes that you are poor if you cannot afford to heat your home; to eat a substantial meal each day; to supply yourself with a warm waterproof overcoat. These are some of the criteria for deprivation included in the National Anti-Poverty Strategy, the brainchild of Proinsias de Rossa, Mr Ahern's predecessor.
This strategy aims to reduce the numbers of poor households experiencing such basic deprivations. The extent of poverty measured in this way has indeed reduced in the 1990s. Using this measure, the Government hopes to eliminate poverty in Ireland, or so Dermot Ahern told the UN General Assembly last month.
But then there is relative poverty. That is a measure of where you are relative to the society you live in. A four-year-old without a trike is not necessarily one of the consistently poor, but in Ireland in the year 2000 she is relatively poor. Does this matter? Relative poverty has deepened in the boom years.
The proportion of the population on the lowest incomes, less than 40 per cent of the average, rose from 7 to 10 per cent in the years 1994 to 1997. A fifth of the population was living on under half-average income in 1997, the latest year for which figures are available.
Writing on this some months ago I quoted Brian Nolan's view that this was unlikely to have changed in the three years since 1997. Since social welfare increases have been lagging behind combined wage increases and tax reductions, inequality is bound to have grown.
In an article in response, Dermot Ahern argued against my use of relative poverty as a measure. What mattered was the fall in consistent poverty, he wrote. "This means the numbers who experienced the enforced absence of such basic things as a decent diet have fallen and are falling. This is what really counts."
Is it? Ask Mary. I have no argument with the targeting of consistent basic deprivations, but this should not be confused with eliminating poverty. How to explain the fall in so-called consistent poverty and the rise in relative poverty? Simple really. Most of us have become better off in the 1990s, but some of us are a lot better off compared to others.
The 1999 Combat Poverty/ESRI report, which documented reduced deprivation, commented that while his happened "the disparity between poor and non-poor households increased dramatically". The gap between the living standards of the poor and the rest of us has been increasing. It is just the nature of the exclusion which has changed.
To live without a trike in Ethiopia may not be social exclusion, but today in Ireland in the world of four-year-olds? And if trikes do not engage you, how about telephones, cars and central heating? To be without these is not currently considered basic deprivation in the anti-poverty strategy, although when surveyed most of us consider them necessities.
In 10 years' time, when every middle-class child has a computer with access to the Internet, what happens to the child in a house without a telephone? Mary will be 14 - will that be the form her social exclusion takes then? The Government is hot on the rhetoric of social inclusion, but is shy of the word which causes exclusion - inequality.
Government policy is increasing inequality. The ESRI forecast a year ago that if the Government stuck to its proclaimed policies, the proportion of the population living on less than half-average incomes would rise in the years to 2001. The Government then introduced an even more inequitable Budget than forecasters expected.
If we accept the spin of this Government, - only target basic deprivation and refuse to acknowledge that inequality is what gives rise to social exclusion - then true poverty will continue to grow.
It is not impossible to eliminate poverty, even when it is defined as relative. Only 5 per cent of Denmark's population lives on less than half-average income compared with 20 per cent of Ireland's. A society with that kind of commitment to equality feels very different to this society.
I don't doubt Dermot Ahern means well, despite the misleading statement he issued. But this Government may right now be playing with the idea of going to the country with another cynical vote-buying Budget. It is easier to justify greed if you can convince the majority that the poor are not really poor. The Government cannot pretend that that is compatible with eliminating poverty. Quite the opposite.
Garret FitzGerald is on leave