I wake up tired. The children are starting to fight. We live in a room with one cooking ring, but when I go to get the breakfast I remember I ran out of coupons and cash yesterday. I give them crisps and the bubble-gum balls my son brought home yesterday.
The kids are undersized and pale, I should take them out more often, but it all gets me down. Sometimes I want to stay in bed and sleep out the rest of my life.
I wonder if people are bored by poverty. Why else would they leave it sink to the state I'm in? Me, I'm one of the large Irish minority whose literacy skills are Third World; one of the majority of single mothers not given cash or other help by their children's fathers. I realise my life will get distorted if I project it through the attitudes of a middle-class journalist, but at least it will be voiced, at least I can point to some of the things blocking change.
If you want references, try the ESRI and United Nations reports. The evidence there shows that the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness hasn't delivered fairness in any real sense. For every day of the partnership process, the gap between rich and poor has widened. People are better off relatively then they ever were, but they're worse off in relation to each other.
If I wasn't so tired, I'd be bitter.
It's a mystery how this can happen when the lads are at the negotiating table. The lads are becoming gentlemen now, all management speak and soft leather shoes. Inez McCormack, a great woman, told them so when she gave her final address as president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions two weeks ago.
"I haven't heard much about narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor," she said. "I do not think people will give much credibility to a process where their rights have been bartered without their say-so for a seat at the table."
Partnership has drawn into the debate about competitiveness and growth people who would otherwise have been powerful critics of unthinking globalisation and unthinking competitiveness: the customs of negotiating mute them at times when they need to speak out.
Wheeling and dealing sucks in the best and the bravest. Everything is up for grabs at the negotiating tables where the unions sit with the Government and IBEC. So if, say, an increase in the minimum wage is placed alongside implementing the EU directive on part-time workers' rights, something has to give.
Inez McCormack asked the trade unions a big question two weeks ago, and they still haven't answered it. Are they to remain a well-organised sectional group or are they prepared to make fairness central to their practices? If not, she suggested the unions drop fairness from their rhetoric.
She put her finger on why directives which largely affect women, young people, people with disabilities and ethnic minorities can be put to one side as they are. The trade union movement continues to marginalise them. "In this first year of the new millennium, of the 26 general seats on the executive council, 25 of them will be held by men," she said, "and I will still have the long outworn novelty of being the only woman."
The Government and IBEC know the lads want to stay at the table. Rich pickings. But they use the unions' presence as a way of blocking social rights, which means not advancing fairness. They used partnership as an excuse not to implement the new workforce rights directive. They used it as an excuse to block the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.
The gentleman's agreement on all sides of the table lets lip service only be paid to inequality. Then, when officials such as Mick O'Reilly of the ATGWU or Brendan Ogle of ILDA ask awkward questions, the lads act like they are still operating a closed shop.
The yea-sayers insist partnership means everyone is happy and everything is already agreed so all the other stuff is unnecessary. Despite some well-delivered huffing and puffing, the unions go along with it. They seem to want to keep inequality and marginalisation as their own territory, without pushing it higher up their priority list.
It is something to be traded while allowing them to keep their moral edge.
The unions are not to the forefront in working to upgrade the status of the community and voluntary pillar, who can find their challenges sidelined by the big boys. But if the unions won't focus more intensely on issues of fairness, then why keep the community and voluntary pillar in the baby seat?
The Programme for Prosperity and Fairness is delivering some prosperity, but less fairness relatively than a decade ago. Maybe the big boys are getting to like the power, without acting on the responsibility that goes with it. After their recent efforts, the language of poverty doesn't mean much any longer. Misery remains as sexy as a neutered cat.
mruane@irish-times.ie