REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF THE PAUL PARTNERSHIP REPORT
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF THE PAUL PARTNERSHIP REPORT “LIFE ON LOW INCOME"
I am delighted to be here today to launch this report, “Life on Low Income - the perception of low income women of their unmet needs”, published by the PAUL Partnership. I would like to thank the Chairman of PAUL Partnership, Tom O’Donnell, for his words of welcome, and Sean Flanagan, Chairman of Moyross Community Centre, for kindly lending us the use of the centre for this launch.
One of the most important aspects of this report is that itgives direct voice to the women who are its subjects – women who are bogged down in poverty and despair, who are so often silenced by their lack of access, and because they lack the language with which to express their needs and fears. So often, it is the professionals, the officials, the voluntary experts who articulate the needs of others in such reports – often very well, often with great accuracy and compassion - but still in a second-hand way, as observers.
The emphasis in this report, in contrast, is on a direct communication link from those who know best the experience of surviving on low incomes, the women who actually live this life. This is appropriate, given that one of the themes that emerges again and again in the report, is the lack of power, of control, of consultation that governs every aspect of these women’s lives. The report in itself is therefore an important start in redressing this imposed silence.
This report is also a salutary reminder for us all, in these days of increasing prosperity and growing hope for our country, that there are still so many of our people for whom that prosperity and the opportunities it brings, belong to a different world - tantalisingly close and yet impossibly distant.
We can only judge ourselves to be a success as a nation if all our members are enabled to participate fully in our society, to live their lives with dignity, to have the basic necessities required to make a decent life for themselves and their children. How sad it was to read that the experience of so many of these women is to dread the milestones of life that normally provide such joy for parents – Christmas, First Communions, Confirmations and birthdays. What should be occasions of joy become times of stress because of the expense and debt they bring with them.
It is clear from this report that it is women who so often carry the greatest burden of this stress and who make the greatest self-sacrifices for their families. It is women who struggle with debt, who do their best to ensure their children are warm and fed, who fight for survival against all the odds and who so often, against all the odds, succeed. Yet it is a struggle that has a high price, a price that so often results in people eking out an existence rather than living a life, a price that we as a society should not be prepared to tolerate.
I believe that change is possible. This is the generation that has come closest to having the capacity to address these problems. True, prosperity can bring selfishness, a strange type of memory loss of the times, not long past, when we all had little and had to struggle to survive. But there is also tremendous goodwill and wonderful work being done by community and voluntary groups all over the country, by organisations such as the PAUL Partnership.
One of the greatest strengths we have at our disposal is the partnership that has developed in recent years between the statutory and community sectors, with the active involvement of those members of our community who need help. That partnership recognises that people need not be passive recipients of assistance. With a little seed funding, to provide the training, skills, facilities and most of all the encouragement required to enable people to escape their trap of poverty and silence, it is possible to make a huge difference. It is possible to enable people to speak for themselves, to become empowered, to unlock the talents and gifts which exist inside each one of us.
With a little help, people the length and breath of the country, are finding their voices, articulating their own needs and discovering that even from the depths of despair, a better life is possible. Reports like this can provide the necessary impetus to start this ball rolling.
I congratulate everyone involved in the preparation of this report: PAUL Partnership, the researchers, Liam Shine, the Chairperson of the Research and Evaluation Committee, and especially the women themselves who contributed their experience and their needs with such openness.
I have great pleasure in launching the report “Life on Low Income – A study of the perceptions of low income women of their unmet needs.”