Social welfare payouts - Struggling families on the brink

THE grinding economic crisis is making life impossible for people in every layer of society but nowhere is the toll more telling than among low-income families on social welfare and amid Ireland’s new poor as mortgage holders face the financial squeeze.

Revealing statistics in today’s front-page report are a reminder of the circumstances confronting thousands of people up and down the country, a truly bleak scenario judging by the level of emergency payments to social welfare recipients in the past 12 months.

No amount of spin doctoring can gloss over the appalling financial hardship of many families. The worst economic crises ever seen in this country, much of it inflicted by wrong-minded government policies, saw community welfare officers dole out hundreds of millions in emergency payments to families mired in financial difficulties.