Eileen Flynn (Independent) | Oireachtas source

As the other Senators were speaking, I was thinking about my own life experience in poverty. My mother was 22 years dead last Wednesday due to pneumonia and bad living conditions. I remember growing up on a halting site in a three bedroom house where five of us used to sleep in the one room and where my mother would light a candle. I remember one time a producer asking me in RTÉ was I ever cold. No, I was never cold. I was always warm and had plenty of love but we were very poor. We would do the markets and did not know we were poor because we had so much love with the candle. Every single night she would light it. Senator Ruane brought it back to me earlier, what my mother and my father did for nine of us who were born and reared on a halting site. The likes of Senator Ruane and me are so lucky to be here, but that does not mean our communities are out of poverty. I think of that song “Love Is All Around”, everywhere we go. For me and for Senator Ruane, poverty is all around us. We see it, we lived it and we breathed it. I thank Senator Ruane, Robert and the rest of her team for bringing this motion forward today.

The Combat Poverty Agency has been closed since 2009, and through the recession, 80% of education funding for the Traveller community was cut, as was funding for working-class people. These organisations which worked for our community had their funding cut. We got rid of the Combat Poverty Agency. I know the Minister of State, and I am so fond of him. I think his heart is in the right place and I understand he is saying it is in the social inclusion division in the Department. We are asking as people who lived and breathed poverty, although obviously we as two individuals have moved on, but our communities are still there. I go into Labre Park and I see it daily within my own community. I see moneylenders and people getting themselves into debt.

In 2015, I met this incredible individual who was ten years homeless and was on drugs. Imagine being homeless for ten years, being on drugs and on the streets of Dublin city. That person today has their own apartment. You can turn your life around with the right supports and it is up to this Government to address that.

Senator Ruane spoke about the sort of one-off social welfare payments. I understand that; we think the budget is brilliant and will help people. It will leave on the lights for an extra week for people and that is the harsh reality of it. I do not want to be seen to be against things all of the time but that is it.

There are people with addictions and who are paying off debts and, with some people, you do not know what is going on in some families’ households. I personally do and I know people at present who owe drug debts and money to moneylenders. I see it in the communities I engage and live with. I know poverty is so real and we need to get down to earth with the poverty that is in our country today. It is up to the Minister of State and to Department to change that. He has the power to support Senator Ruane’s motion by setting up the stand-alone, independent agency that will hold the Government to account so that we can future-proof our generations and we will not have people struggling to get into politics and struggling for jobs.

With the talk of employment going through the roof and how we are great in providing employment, how come then 86% of my community is unemployed? What is it? Do we not matter? Do we not want to work? Do we not want to earn a living or to go to school? Do we not want to do that and are we not included in these conversations? Enough is enough. Senator Ruane's motions are so real. We have had them before where we are asking to set up these bodies again to save people’s lives, because with the stand-alone agency, it will hold the Government to account and that is what we want to do. We want to make people’s lives better, Minister. By supporting this motion, that is what we can do, and we can do it together.

We would like to think that poverty does not exist. We hear where people are on drugs in the Traveller community. We have a mental health crisis within our community and that comes from poverty, whether we like it or not. We can deal with poverty and support people by giving them a hand up, not even a handout but a hand up, out of poverty. We need all communities to get out of poverty. This is one step, and it is only a step, but it is a step in the right direction. It is very disheartening, because I am very fond of the Minister of State, to see that we are patting ourselves on the back and saying we are doing a great job for these people, for the “thems” and the “theys”, for youse over there and for the others. In reality, however, Minister, we are not, because in the world of the “theys”, we have more addiction than we have ever had in this society. We have people living with disabilities who have little or no supports. I am begging of the Minister of State here.

Every single night of my life I ring my husband and ask him to please mind Lacey. My little girl is not two until next September, and that is when I know I can move on and that I do not have to worry about cot death. In the past two days in my community I have heard of three cot deaths. I am sick of hearing of cot deaths and suicide due to nothing else but poverty. Again, we had my mother dying at the age of 48. I am 22 years without my mother all because of living conditions and the way we have to live just because we are members of the Traveller community. It is unfair and unjust and, again, this is only a step. It is scandalous that in Ireland in 2022 we are here speaking about putting in better measures to get people out of poverty in today’s world.