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

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. 

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

Imagine that money being used to eradicate homelessness by purchasing or building homes.

The cost of living crisis — and it is a crisis for many — is only exacerbating what was already a chasm between the haves and have-nots. Such a high number of families are living from pay packet to pay packet, even in cases where the pay should hypothetically see them in good stead, that anybody who can hold on to a few extra euro at the end of the month ends up slowly pulling away from those who cannot.

There is also the phenomenon that just subsisting can prolong and deepen poverty. 

It’s perhaps best, and most irreverently, known as boots theory, from a Terry Pratchett novel where the example given was that if you could afford a very good pair of boots, they would last for years, whereas if you can only afford cheaper ones that need to be replaced more quickly, you’ll end up spending more over the same time period. 

Academic studies have identified similar circumstances where people have to rent instead of buy houses, for example; and the cost of rent is now astronomical in this country.

Worryingly, while stress has long been known to have detrimental effects on health, the Patrick MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, was told last week that poverty is actually making people age faster. Rose Anne Kenny of TCD said: “The children experiencing depression at home, alcohol, drugs, homelessness, uncertainty, et cetera – those children age faster.”

Most of these problems are within our ability to repair, or at the very least mitigate. We just never seem to be able to invest the right amounts in the right projects at the right time. Perhaps we need to start thinking beyond the years right in front of us.

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Future generations

Calls for the Government to appoint a ‘commissioner for future generations’ are not without merit, even that sort of role might seem more long term than we’re used to.

Still, its supporters would say that’s part of the point. Much social and economic policy is based on the short term — the next election, the next budget, or what have you. As a nation and a planet, we are now faced with sustained challenges that will continue to plague us long after our grandchildren have grown to maturity.

Even apart from climate collapse or the seemingly ever-present threat of global war and deep recession, the looming increase in pension claimants is not going to go away, nor are the demands for services that go with a population that is both growing and ageing.

As Sarah Carr of the Goal NextGen youth programme said: “Today’s policies shape tomorrow’s realities, from housing and healthcare to climate and economy. We are the last generation with a real chance to get this right and a commissioner for future generations can pave the way for action.”

As such, a move to a more holistic, long-term decision-making approach can only be a good thing, and a cultural shake-up that we could benefit from.

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New crisis in Afghanistan 

Between the genocide in Gaza and ongoing illegal invasion of Ukraine, it can be easy to overlook the brutal totalitarian regime of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The more than 1.4m people fleeing or being expelled from Iran back to that country don’t have the luxury of forgetting, however. Some 500,000 have been caught up in a crackdown following the Israel-Iran exchange of missiles recently, but the process had begun before that as Iran claims it no longer has the resources to support them. Now they are being accused of spying for Israel.

Iran claims as many as 6m Afghans live in the country, while 20m people in Afghanistan rely on humanitarian aid to survive.

While the deportees include people who have worked in Iran for decades as well as recent arrivals, the most ominous aspect is the number of women being sent back to a country that grows increasingly hostile toward women on a daily basis.

The deportees are being left at border crossings — but because women cannot travel without a male escort in Afghanistan, some women and their children — including babies — are being left with little more than the desperate hope that some relative in the country’s heartlands will take them in. Another 1m at least have been expelled from Pakistan.

There is a very real danger that these already impoverished deportees will end up at the heart of a new humanitarian crisis. Given the Taliban’s horrific human rights record, one wonders who might come to their aid.