If we’re so well off, how come so many suffer the effects of poverty?

A very pertinent question was asked by Fr Peter McVerry, one of the leading activists on homelessness in this country, when he was in Cork this week.

It is this: What is the legacy of what now appears to have been phase one of the Celtic tiger?

Peter McVerry comprehensively answered the question in his address in the Cork Institute of Technology, and more of that below.

You would not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the Celtic tiger is about to stride through the land again, so that’s the genesis of his reference to phase one.

Neither would you have to be a political analyst specialising in creative accountancy to realise that the tiger’s re-emergence in phase two will broadly coincide with the lead-up to the next general election.

Already we have been told that the economy is heading towards boom again and this will become evident in Brian Cowen’s first Budget as Finance Minister next December.

Political promissory notes have already been issued by the two political parties which constitute the Government that squandered the benefits of phase one of the tiger.

Mary Harney promised that the health service will be overhauled to such an extent, and there will be so many staff available, that trolleys will disappear; there will be enough beds for everybody and Accident & Emergency departments will be stress-free zones.

Our new Minister for Health has the zealousness of St Joan of Arc, and the likelihood is that she will end up consumed, unlike the saint, in the confetti of medical cards we can expect.

Those 2,000 phantom gardaí promised before the last general election, but which failed to materialise, are being drilled once more by Minster for Justice Michael McDowell.

An election promise is commonly referred to as a misfeasance (being the improper performance of an act that is lawful in itself) in Rooskey, Co Roscommon - and they know a lot about those in that parish.

It’s quite lawful to promise 2,000 extra gardaí, but rather improper not to deliver, especially when they’ve helped deliver a return to governmental power.

Insofar as Celtic tiger phase one is concerned, Peter McVerry - talking in the context of failure to address inequality in a country with so many resources - said what has been said in this column ad nauseam.

“I believe that it is because our decision-makers are so removed from the problems of poverty and its consequences. They have little understanding, and even less experience, of the consequences of their decisions on the lives of the poor.”

Peter McVerry has an impeccable record as a champion of those who have been forgotten by a Government which doesn’t even know they exist, and couldn’t care less how they fare. The reason is that Peter McVerry lives in Ballymun, and has done so since 1980.

The Belfast man is trying to awaken the conscience of the Government to the consequences of their decisions on the poor.

In particular, he has sought to cater for those deemed too difficult to deal with by other agencies. Pillar-to-post cases who might otherwise fall through the cracks of a supposedly caring society.

More than 21 years ago he founded the Arrupe Society to provide care and accommodation for homeless boys and opened further hostels in Ballymun, Drumcondra and Glasnevin. These hostels are especially geared to those who fail to meet the regulations of many other hostels that stipulate that residents must be employed or attending a course.

He has recently opened a residential drug detox centre in Co Dublin for homeless drug users.

According to McVerry - and he knows what he is talking about - homelessness actually doubled during the lifetime of the first outing of the Celtic Tiger. We can all identify with him when he avers that many of the other social problems that could have been tackled during the tiger’s last reincarnation, just weren’t.

I don’t mean vital problems like €15m equestrian centres, or a useless €50m electronic voting system. Problems such as A&E overcrowding, disability services, dilapidated schools, food poverty, persistent homelessness, inadequate psychiatric services, just to mention a few in the litany.

JUST how out of touch the Government is with the people was epitomised last Tuesday.

As people angrily protested outside the Dáil over the appalling state of our health service, inside the chamber our Taoiseach Bertie Ahern defended it. As children pleaded for their grannies to be taken off trolleys and be moved to hospital beds, Bertie Ahern inanely said: “Some hospitals do not have difficulties. All the large hospitals have these difficulties.”

According to the general secretary of the Irish Nurses Organisation, Liam Doran, lethargy and bureaucracy were preventing acute hospitals from implementing management systems to address overcrowding in A&E departments.

Mary Harney has, as the world knows, declared this as her priority, but says it is not a problem which could be sorted out overnight. The problem about this country is that we seem to live in the land of the midnight sun insofar as getting the Government to solve any problems is concerned.

Maybe she might be inclined to listen to the INO, which has already presented her with a list of initiatives needed to address overcrowding in A&E departments. Innovation, rather than just money, is involved, so it could be doomed to failure. Problem-solving here means that more taxpayers’ money is thrown at an obviously defective situation - and there is no greater example of it than the minister’s own department.

It is really perverse that €10bn cannot give a country with a population of only four million people a decent health service.

Maybe the mentality which can build millions of euro worth of hospital units, but let them lie idle because there’s a ban of recruitment in the public sector, would explain it. It’s the same mentality which can boast that there’s an extra billion in the exchequer - because it wasn’t spent.

We are told that the Government will play catch-up, and that the money will be spent by December. And we all know what’s happening in December.

Brian Cowen’s first budget is what’s happening. And that €1 billion, which is not extra money but money which the Government didn’t spend on vital services, will help him to look good.

Services like those ones outlined by Peter McVerry. He emphasised two failures of social policy which he described as “particularly disgraceful” because they were so fundamental to the life of those who were poor. These were the failure to increase the limits of eligibility for the medical card and also the failure to provide adequate social housing.

I hope Peter McVerry hangs onto that speech because he’ll get more mileage from it when he comes to wonder what was the legacy of the Celtic tiger, phase two.