People in need - A republic that is not yet equal

REQUESTS for help from people in difficulties have soared during the first quarter of this year.

From January to March of 2007 St Vincent de Paul (SVP) received 2,853 requests for assistance in Dublin, but that figure jumped by 2,005 this year to 4,858. This amounts to an increase of more than 70%.

Although those figures relate only to the Dublin area, a spokesman for SVP confidently states that those figures would be replicated for the country as a whole. “We are starting to see people we last saw in 1999,” the spokesman said.

Calls for help would normally be declining at this time of year, but SVP states that they are running at a level they would normally experience coming up to Christmas. Families on social welfare or living on the minimum wage are hardest hit because the greatest proportion of their income normally goes on basics.

The rocketing rise in the price of food, which has gone up by 9.3% in the past 12 months, is a huge part of the problem. Fuel bills are up 12.3%, while others — such as medical bills — are up 5.7% and schooling costs have increased by 5.9%. Difficulties caused by those increases have been seriously compounded by job losses.

A vice-president of SVP has rounded on business groups that have called for cutting the current minimum wage of €8.65 an hour. They are essentially contending that it is not those at the top who are undermining our competitiveness, but those at the bottom.

The exorbitant bonuses and pay rises granted to senior civil servants and business officials may not contribute that much to the overall costs in the broad scheme of things, but they provide dreadful examples and do enormous damage from the psychological standpoint.

It is an outrage for any self-respecting republic to call on the people working at the lowest end of the social ladder to cut back while some of those at the top are being allowed to milk the system, by according themselves bonuses that are grossly in excess of what the average worker earns in a year of honest toil.

In his celebrated speech to the joint session of the US Congress last week An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern quoted from the proclamation of the republic: “The republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally.”

Mr Ahern wound up his address with the observation: “In history, in politics and in life, there are no ends, only new beginnings.” As we begin anew with Brian Cowen as taoiseach this week, let us resolve that this republic renews its pledge to stamp out poverty by 2016. This will not be achieved by turning our backs on the underprivileged, or by calling for the biggest sacrifices from the poorer sections of society.