Young lives weighed down with adult concerns

IMAGINE a generation of schoolchildren filled with as much anxiety and dread over bailouts and budgets as their put-upon parents.

According to Barnardos, it may already be happening.

Finola Halligan, a project leader at a family support service in west Dublin, said she knew an 8-year-old girl who, upon her return to school in September, visited the school office every single day for two weeks to check whether the back-to-school allowance had been paid.