Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I, too, will not be speaking again on the Order of Business this week so I wish everyone, both Members and Oireachtas staff, a very happy Christmas.

Christmas is a time I really enjoy. I love being at home with my family but it comes sometimes with a huge amount of guilt when I look around at my community and the hardships that people face. I can see the steady flow of loan sharks' cars coming in and out and what it takes for people to actually try to give their children what they want. As a lone parent trying to pay rent and not being in employment, I used loan sharks for many years. I know the loop that a person can get into with that when the credit union loans are building up. It got me thinking when I see that because I feel I am very in tune with my surroundings and with the environment in my community. It made me think of the efforts we go to not be poor but how we are poor.

Poverty now looks very different from what it did in the 1960s and 1970s. My dad used to tell me about bringing jam jars to the cinema to try to swap them for a ticket or about people having to put beer mats in their shoes because there was a hole in the sole. That is not what poverty looks like anymore. Because poverty does not look the way it used to, people do not realise that individuals are living in extreme poverty even when they have a pair of Nike trainers on their feet and a shiny new tracksuit on their back. The have the latter because they are doing everything they can to keep up appearances in order to not stand out and look different. It is hugely competitive out there and parents are trying so hard to be able to give their kids what they want. That comes at a bigger cost in the context of what poverty actually really means, however. No longer is it only poverty of material things; it is poverty of information, access, dialogue, cultural events, social capital and being able to choose what a person does with his or her life. It is poverty of not being able to engage in critical dialogue and analysis of what is going on with vaccines. Poverty seeps into so much of the psyche and impacts on people's health and well-being in such a stark way that it is so hard to get out of that loop.

I would like to have a debate on poverty in Ireland in the new year. I am very familiar with urban poverty, but I know the rural experience can be very different. We need to discuss what poverty looks like in the more general sense in the 21st century. We also really need to discuss the systems that perpetuate poverty in order that we can move beyond making cosmetic change to policies and actually look at real system change that will end poverty in Ireland.