Irish Examiner view: Poverty is driving a wedge between generations in Ireland

We have 5,000 homeless children in a country which spends €350m a year housing homeless families in Dublin alone

Children's ombudsman Niall Muldoon said children from Ireland’s wealthier families are 'sailing away from the have-nots'. File picture: Brian Lawless/PA

We may all know it on some instinctual level, but ombudsman for children Niall Muldoon stating aloud that the children from Ireland’s wealthier families are “sailing away from the have-nots” is sobering nonetheless.

This is a country which has been running budget surpluses and which has been among the world’s wealthier nations since the Celtic Tiger era. And yet inequality persists, and is widening.